Driving is often a miserable experience that leaves people isolated and physically deprived
Yet, on average, Americans commute 50 minutes daily and 90 percent of the time by car, says writer Kirsten Dirksen in the Huffington Post.
Much of this suffering is due to the ways we built up our places during a time in our history when bicycling and walking became afterthoughts.
We forgot that bicycling and walking are great for your health. Transit, in turn, encourages walking and biking. And properly designed neighborhoods encourage walking, biking, and transit.
The shape of cities and transit networks thus shapes our health. So say a plethora of studies and real-life examples from around the world, which collectively constitute overwhelming evidence for the public-health benefits of smart planning and transportation options.
Yet, in today’s cities and suburbs, the lack of such options and planning is killing us. Around the world, “approximately 5.3 million people die prematurely every year due to cardiovascular diseases, breast and colon cancer and diabetes, and other illnesses associated with sedentary lifestyles,” notes Dario Hidalgo of TheCityFix.
Of course, providing better transit alone will not fix this problem (healthy food, for one, is obviously important), but it is certainly a good start.
It seems like a jump to get people to switch from their drive-alone car cocoons to transit, and even moreso to get them to bike. However, the correlation between biking and physical health is well established and makes a pretty strong argument.
People who bicycle regularly weigh some nine pounds less than those who predominantly drive, explains an Imperial College, London report. (I would argue that the benefits are even greater, as I think that weight or body mass index are limited metrics of overall health. I’d like to see more emphasis on other data, such as cardiovascular fitness and ratio of muscle to body fat).
Transportation options is the gift that keeps on giving
An efficient, affordable transit network is one key to better health. This can be as basic as a solid bus service, or can include a plethora of enhanced bus options and rail. Whatever the system, people who use transit “get more than three times the amount of physical activity per day than those who don’t,” just by walking to and from it, according to TransLoc – 19 minutes of exercise daily versus six minutes for those who don’t use transit.
Transit also reduces air pollution, making everyone healthier. Not to mention that city buses today often have cleaner engines than do cars.
Public transit also causes fewer accidents than individual cars, is far safer, is known to reduce stress, and improves the quality of life for vulnerable populations.
As just one example, Bogota, Columbia’s heralded TransMilenio bus rapid transit (BRT) system encourages walking. According to TheCityFix, a study found that TransMilenio riders get 22 minutes a day and 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity more than non-users.
Alongside transit, separated bicycle paths encourage biking, and biking in turn improves public health. Fox News explains that “every $1,300 New York City invested in building bike lanes in 2015 provided benefits equivalent to one additional year of life at full health over the lifetime of all city residents.” My niece in Brooklyn has been part of this trend. She started biking to her job – saving time and money as well as improving her health – when a separated bike lane was built.
Meanwhile, a huge study out of the UK shows that biking to work correlates with “a 41 percent lower risk of dying overall compared to commuting by car or public transport. Cycle commuters had a 52 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease and a 40 percent lower risk of dying from cancer.” This is in spite of the dangers of pollution, and of accidents in a country with a transportation system not constructed for bicycle safety.
Of course, pollution can negate some of the benefits of bicycling. It is not healthy to be following that van belching smoke. Still, even with unhealthy air, biking outweighs the dangers of pollution, up to a point. A University of Cambridge study cited in Treehugger shows that, in heavily polluted cities, it’s best to limit biking time, but the benefits are still there. Even in Delhi, India, one of the world’s most polluted cities, five hours of biking a week is beneficial, although after that the harm predominates.
The built environment shapes transit
Biking, walking, and transit may be seen as the veins and arteries of a healthy system, but a well-designed built environment constitutes the bones. A CityLab article points to “evidence of a close correspondence between obesity and unwalkable, car-dependent neighborhoods.” Alongside better transit, designing neighborhoods that encourage walking and biking is crucial to public health.
Well-designed cities across the planet are healthier cities, according to a recent study cited in Co.Design. The researchers followed 14,000 people in 14 cities around the globe, concluding that people living in dense, walkable, bikeable neighborhoods with plenty of amenities and access to transit enjoy up to 90 extra minutes of exercise a week.
Besides the physical health benefits, walkable neighborhoods, with shops, community centers, parks, and other destinations, provide a great social benefit in the “chance” meeting with neighbors and acquaintances that used to be part of daily life. Good urban (and suburban) design fights loneliness and improves our mental health, notes an article in the journal Public Square.
One caveat is that links between transit and health are not completely established, since correlation does not prove cause. So claims a study from the University of Minnesota, in which researchers found that using BMI to argue for the benefit of transit “doesn’t account for commuters who may eat fast food every day or substitute buses and trains for walking from place to place.” And it is possible that other researchers and policy experts are over-interpreting what evidence they have to draw conclusions they prefer about the benefits of walking, biking, and transit. It is further possible that bicycle riders already tend to be healthier overall, and this explains their better results.
Still, this report constitutes a lone note of caution among a mass of evidence from around the world. And in the case of walking, biking, and transit, the evidence seems overwhelming, while counter-examples and alternative explanations are few and far between. Cause and effect seem firm; exercise is well established as important to one’s health.
Like expert bicyclists on well-protected bike paths, planners should be feeling confident that they will be creating can’t-lose cities of the future when they make significant improvements for people who bike, walk, and take transit.
Photos of woman on Washington D.C. subway escalator by ehpien/Flickr. Photo of man on a bike in Delhi by IFPRI -IMAGES/Flickr.