What can better transportation options mean for your health?
Active transportation, such as walking and biking, combines moving more with getting you where you need to go. Simple choices that prioritize active options over driving can have large health implications at a personal and local level.
These switches can result in higher life‐expectancy, reduced stress‐related illness, and reduced a likelihood of illness or death from obesity, heart and lung diseases, and diabetes. More broadly, an accompanying decrease in driving reduces emissions of carcinogens and particulates that cause asthma, improving a region’s air and water quality.
Education and awareness campaigns designed to enhance public safety can reduce accidents and fatalities associated with all modes of travel.
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Let’s get this out of the way first: I wear a bike helmet. I think everyone should wear a helmet, including car drivers and pedestrians, who both have a tendency to go through windshields and suffer severe head injuries when involved in a crash. But the only drivers I know that wear helmets are professional… Read more »
Last week, sadly, two tragic deaths represented unfortunate, but predictable firsts in transportation. They are also reminders that despite the very real potential benefits of new technology, operating large metal objects at high speeds is an inherently dangerous activity, and public safety is best served by reducing people’s exposure to the risk—which means designing urban… Read more »
Just as there are two Americas, there are two types of cyclists. First, there are the Cyclists with a capital “C,” clad in Lycra and obsessed with speed. These cyclists probably spent upwards of $1,000 on a bike, are often male, and everything about them signals that cycling is not for mere mortals. These adrenaline… Read more »
The only transportation demand management (TDM) program for public school faculty and staff in the U.S. has been created in Arlington County, Virginia. The program, called “ATP Schools,” is being administered by Arlington Transportation Partners (ATP), the employer-outreach arm of Arlington County Commuter Services. Funded by a grant from Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public… Read more »
A staple of every household’s week is a trip to the supermarket. Maybe you jump in your car for a 10-minute drive, or get on a bus or metro or your bike for a short ride. You likely don’t think much about this trip because it’s straightforward, simple. But in Baltimore, more than 73,000 people… Read more »
Five cities, five years to make a difference in their community’s health. That’s the challenge presented by the non-profit Health Initiative Coordinating Council (HICCup) and its Way to Wellville program. Founded in 2013 by prolific angel investor Esther Dyson, HICCup looks at common barriers to good health, such as poverty and education, but also questions… Read more »
The Lincoln Memorial has the highest percentage of “casual riders” – typically assumed to be tourists who rent on the fly – on Washington D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare system., at 82.3 percent. We’ve never really had a view of how people are moving around the region on bicycle before CaBi came along and opened up its ridership… Read more »
For years, public health and community transportation planning worked together like kids at an sixth-grade dance: boys on one side, girls on the other. They see each other, but there’s not much, if any, mingling. But health and transportation professionals are learning more about and appreciating what they have in common with “the other side,”… Read more »
It has been well documented that having happy and fit employees helps productivity and the bottom line, but many businesses may be overlooking one of the cheaper ways to support a healthy work place: becoming a Bicycle Friendly Business through the League of American Bicyclists. And businesses in Arlington, Virginia may find earning that designation especially easy… Read more »
This article was originally published by Tech Cocktail. Apple’s announcement in September regarding the 2015 launch of the Apple Watch has some pundits wondering if the tech giant can do for wearable tech what it did for the MP3 player and smartphone: create a must-have consumer device out of a fledgling, yet promising, product line. I think the more… Read more »
This article is adapted from the Arlington Transportation Partners blog. Last week’s Greater Washington’s Healthiest Employers Awards and Workplace Wellness Expo, hosted by the Washington Business Journal and United Healthcare, recognized 50 companies in the D.C. region. And it is notable that four out of the five “healthiest employers” finalists from Arlington County are also Arlington… Read more »
It seems that, when it comes to making our transportation choices, as we age, we are most likely to rebel against the ways we traveled in our youth. These are among the findings by TransitCenter in Who’s On Board: The 2014 Mobility Attitudes Survey. There is evidence that Millennials grew up in their early years under… Read more »