Long gone are the days of planning and building transportation facilities without regard to the impacts on people’s health and their environment. And long gone are the days when transportation and health experts work in separate worlds, never sharing their expertise.
The mash-up of transportation and health issues is increasingly a focus of conference sessions, and sometimes the entire focus of a conference. There’s even a LinkedIn group, Transportation-Public Health Link, tracking related stories and news and fostering conversations.
This isn’t just an insider issue for a few health and transportation geeks. As long ago as 2005, the non-partisan blue ribbon National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, created by Congress in 2005 to guide a new federal transportation policy and funding bill, noted: “The nation’s surface transportation network regrettably exacts a terrible toll in lost lives and damaged health.”
It’s clear that well-planned transportation facilities and options can reduce collision injuries and deaths, and assist to reduce the incidence of obesity, lung cancer, asthma and heart disease. Transportation is also critical for accessing health care and inducing physical activity.
And this isn’t about forcing people to walk and bike, or forcing governments to build sidewalks and bike paths instead of roads. Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute explained it well in a 2010 Planetizen article:
“What does this mean for planners? It is not our role to force people to increase their walking and cycling activity for health sake. Rather, our role is to help decision-makers and the general public understand the full impacts of their decisions, including indirect impacts such as long-term public fitness and health effects. They can then make informed decisions when designing communities and transport facilities, creating transport policies, or choosing where to live.
“The challenge for planners it to clearly communicate these impacts. For example, we can point out that expanding an urban arterial from four to six lanes may improve motor vehicle traffic conditions, but will degrade walking and cycling conditions which has negative health consequences, providing additional support for alternative congestion reduction strategies. We can quantify the health benefits that result from improving walking and cycling conditions, traffic speed-control programs, transportation demand management strategies, and smart growth land use policies. Similarly, we can point out that among the many benefits of improving public-transit service is that, by stimulating more walking and cycling activity, this helps improve public fitness and health. We can work with public health officials so they understand the many ways that transport and land use policy and planning reforms can help achieve their goals.”
Today there are many examples of transportation and health professionals collaborating to figure out how to improve existing transportation networks, and build new transportation facilities, to foster a community’s health and sustainability – in addition to improving mobility.
That’s exactly what a group of Spokane, Washington transportation and health professionals hope to achieve in a transportation symposium this week (September 12), “Inland Empire at a Turning Point (hashtag: #SRHD)” The Symposium is funded in part with a grant from the Community Transformation Grant Program of the Centers for Disease Control.
The cosponsors, the Spokane Regional Health District and the Inland Empire chapter of the American Planning Association are inviting “innovative transportation professionals to hear and share what other communities are doing to get out ahead of transportation challenges” and “explore strategies for creating transportation systems that spur great communities.”
The cosponsors have a pretty short, plain language description of the challenge:“Both nationally and locally communities are facing new significant forces that play into our transportation investment choices; the aging Baby Boomer generation, rising obesity rates, increased demand for multimodal facilities, significant backlogs of deferred facility maintenance and preservation work and shrinking budgets. The customary methods of tackling tough transportation questions may no longer be applicable to today’s challenges.”
Examples of how the Spokane Regional Health District is involved:
- Partnered with a broad spectrum of community groups and leaders on active transportation projects: Complete Streets, City of Spokane Valley Bike and Pedestrian Plan, Safe Routes to School, City of Spokane Pedestrian Plan.
- Worked on Safe Routes to Schools in collaboration with school administrators, staff, parents and children and the State DOT.
- Partnered with the City of Spokane to implement an Health Impacts Assessment on the proposed University District Bike and Pedestrian Bridge.
This article was excerpted from Transportation Issues Daily. Please read the full article there.
Photo by Maureen Sill