Measurements of cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra below the knee show deviations from simple power laws, including multi-TeV structures. A possible explanation is that one or a few nearby sources contribute an additional component to the local spectrum. However, a previous study shows that a dominant local contribution is statistically unlikely under a homogeneous diffusion model. In this work, we investigate how this probability changes if cosmic rays experience inefficient transport near their sources, motivated by observations of extended $\gamma$-ray emission around Galactic accelerators. We derive a series Green’s function that enables fast calculations of the particle distribution in this scenario, making Monte Carlo calculations for Galactic source populations feasible. The inner slow-diffusion region delays escape and redistributes the arriving particles in time and energy. In Monte Carlo realizations, the probability that the strongest local source becomes comparable to the background at 10 TeV increases from about 0.4% in homogeneous diffusion to 1.7%–2.2% in the two-zone models. Thus inhibited near-source transport weakens, but does not remove, the statistical difficulty. We then examine cataloged nearby candidate supernova remnants and show that a 10 TeV feature can be reproduced only with additional assumptions, especially a harder local injection spectrum and a favorable diffusion coefficient. The predicted contribution of a given source changes strongly among different particle transport models. Therefore, the local-source interpretations are plausible but highly model dependent and require independent constraints on source injection history, particle transport mechanisms, and local interstellar turbulence.

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• Cosmic ray propagation
• Cosmic ray sources