Category: Biking Elsewhere

By Larry Cohen, Nation of Change (see the original for hyper links for more background)
Recently, Dr. Richard Jackson, a friend and colleague (a leading expert in health and the built environment) received a letter from his building’s management demanding he move his bike – from leaning against the wall of his rented parking spot. Though he lives in LA, he doesn’t own a car; his bike is his transportation. According to management, his bike posed an affront to the “safety, cleanliness and accessibility of the building” – meanwhile, the other tenants’ cars apparently raised no such concerns.
“The car is still king – from parking lots to roadways. And car companies intend to keep it that way.”
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But, the auto industry’s profits depend on making sure that cars remain the standard mode of transportation – and that car companies grow their customer base, not lose them to bicycles. Auto companies are fueled by profits, and the auto industry spent over $45 million last year alone on lobbying Congress and other federal agencies in order to maintain a monopoly on our roadways. The auto industry makes money by ensuring that the public values driving and that roads are built for cars alone – even if this means greater demand for fossil fuel, increased environmental degradation, fewer opportunities for physical activity, and more road-related injuries.
They’ve gone beyond lobbying, releasing a spate of ads recently – many in college newspapers – that hone in on bikers and imply that alternatives to driving are humiliating or dangerous, and generally bad for communities – despite growing evidence to the contrary. Shame becomes the bargaining chip in GM’s recent ad depicting a biker, embarrassed to be seen by girls who are driving in a car. Another ad shows a bus with the destination sign reading "creeps and weirdos." But this campaign strategy makes no sense. Regular drivers benefit, too, when more people take alternate modes of travel. It means fewer cars will be on the road, which lowers the incidents of traffic crashes and helps to increase safety overall.
And, despite what these ads would have you believe, biking and active transportation are a solid investment in health, communities and prevention. Bikes could save our nation as much as $3.8 billion a year by promoting physical activity, decreasing chronic disease and reducing healthcare costs. An increase to 15% active transportation in the Bay Area would result in 2,236 fewer deaths, and a gain 22,807 total years of life. Bike commuting costs as little as five cents per mile, reduces water and noise pollution, road wear and traffic congestion. In Portland OR – known for its biking culture – researchers found that bike-related industry contribute significantly to the local economy – providing somewhere between 850 to 1150 jobs and generating about $90 million a year. A new report shows that bikes saved Iowa $70 million in healthcare costs, and generate $1 million each day.
And more people are biking. Nearly half of 18 to 34-year-old drivers are driving less and owning fewer cars. Equally important, nearly two-thirds surveyed said they would drive less if alternative transportation, such as public transportation, was available. In urban centers across the country, biking has enjoyed a re-birth of hipster cool – from fixies to cyclovias to bike rack art installations to Oakland’s scraper bikes that ‘go hard, I don’t need no car.’
This is great news for bike enthusiasts, environmentalists and public health advocates, but we need our street infrastructure to support physical activity. Roads designed for cars – and only cars – have real impacts on our health and safety. A recent report found that the number of combined biking and pedestrian traffic deaths has increased in the last two years to 14%. This is an appalling but preventable outcome, likely stemming from more people walking and biking without changes to the built environment and structural support.
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Investing in cheap, proven solutions to improve health and the economy should be a top priority for our country. It’s time to think differently – to stand up to those who still say the car is king, and to create a new norm that is in harmony with the environment and our health. In order to do this, institutions need to support cyclists by providing bike racks, and not penalize them for locking bikes in parking lots. Cities can implement Complete Streets policies and include the needs of cyclists and pedestrians when plotting intersections and roads. But in order to do this, we also need support from the federal government – not for Congress to cut entirely federal funding for biking and walking. And we need car companies to value health over profits, and work with communities – not against them – in finding solutions.
Continue reading “Creeps and Weirdos: The Auto Industry Agenda for Keeping You on Four Wheels”

Then why do so many Road “Engineers” think they can do the same with bike/ped traffic and just have them disappear by lack of facilities?
Continue reading “If this is wrong thinking…”

from Streetsblog Capitol Hill by Ben Goldman
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American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard believes that most Americans “know America will need more oil.
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So, more drilling (oil companies make money) and lax regulations (trucking industry makes money) mean slightly lower shipping costs (mega-retailers make money). Big Oil, Big Truck, and Big Box — whose business models each depend on wider highways and sprawl — are the major beneficiaries of this bill.
Continue reading “Who Still Likes the House Transpo Bill? Big Oil, Big Truck, and Big Box Retail”

from Switchboard, from NRDC › Kaid Benfield’s Blog by Kaid Benfield

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The Gallup study examined a number of questions directly related to the built environment, including the convenience of public transportation, the ease of access to shops, the presence of parks and sports facilities, the ease of access to cultural and entertainment facilities, and the presence of libraries.  All were found to correlate significantly with happiness, with convenient public transportation and easy access to cultural and leisure facilities showing the strongest correlation. 

The statistical analysis also included questions related to urban environmental quality apart from cities’ built form, and produced additional significant correlations:

“The more respondents felt their city was beautiful (aesthetics), felt it was clean (aesthetics and safety), and felt safe walking at night (safety), the more likely they were to report being happy.  Similarly, the more they felt that publicly provided water was safe, and their city was a good place to rear and care for children, the more likely they were to be happy.”

Among these, the perception of living in a beautiful city had the strongest correlation with happiness.  Curiously, though, the researchers found that the perception of “clean streets, sidewalks, and public spaces” actually had a somewhat negative association with happiness.  Happy people apparently find their urban environments both beautiful and messy.  (Well, the survey did include New York.)

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Continue reading “The environmental building blocks of urban happiness”

However, putting more money in the hands of the states actually keeps it further out of reach of cities and towns that want to build better streets for biking and walking. The League of American Bicyclists’ Andy Clarke, following the proceedings on Twitter, responded that Herrera Buetler and Shuster “are missing the point.” The federal government is not dictating anything, Clarke said: “States are the problem.”
Via https://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/house-amendment-to-save-federal-bikeped-programs-fails/

More info here.

[B’ Spokes: I wounder if the same effect is also happening with an active life style… If the physician does not lead one themselves then they are probably less likely to recommend that as well. ]
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By Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
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“Our findings indicate that physicians with normal BMI more frequently reported discussing weight loss with patients than overweight or obese physicians. Physicians with normal BMI also have greater confidence in their ability to provide diet and exercise counseling and perceive their weight loss advice as trustworthy when compared to overweight or obese physicians,” said Sara Bleich, PhD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management. “In addition, obese physicians had greater confidence in prescribing weight loss medications and were more likely to report success in helping patients lose weight.”
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Despite guidelines for physicians to counsel and treat obese patients, previous studies have found only one-third of these patients report receiving an obesity diagnosis or weight-related counseling from their physicians.
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Continue reading “Physician’s Weight May Influence Obesity Diagnosis and Care”

Excellent review from our friends over in Arlington, VA and it even include a short video
https://washingtonwheelman.blogspot.com/2012/01/sharrows-on-george-mason-drive.html

-> According to a Jan. 22nd Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Researchers can have revelatory moments in remarkable places–the African savannah, an ancient library, or the ruins of a lost civilization. But Richard J. Jackson’s epiphany occurred in 1999 in a banal American landscape: a dismal stretch of the car-choked Buford Highway, near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Dr. Jackson, who was then the head of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, was rushing to a meeting where leading epidemiologists would discuss the major health threats of the 21st century. On the side of the road he saw an elderly woman walking, bent with a load of shopping bags. It was a blisteringly hot day, and there was little hope that she would find public transportation."
"At that moment, Dr. Jackson says, ‘I realized that the major threat was how we had built America.’ His center had already been dealing with problems that he suspected had origins in the built environment–asthma caused by particulates from cars and trucks, water contamination from excessive runoff, lead poisoning from contaminated houses and soil, and obesity, heart conditions, and depression exacerbated by stressful living conditions, long commutes, lack of access to fresh food, and isolating, car-oriented communities. Treatments could come in the form of pills, inhalers, and insulin shots, but real solutions had bigger implications…"
Source: https://bit.ly/y85FUr
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

B’ Spokes: Simple message, would should do that here as well.
https://www.guampdn.com/article/20120125/COMMUNITIES/201250301