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Healthy Communities and Transportation
If you spend an hour every day in your car, you'll burn approximately 80 calories doing so. However, if you instead spend that hour walking or bicycling at a slow leisurely pace, you'll burn 240 calories. And walking or biking quickly, you'll burn a whopping 440 calories. If you substitute an hour of sitting for an hour of activity every day, your heart, your lungs, your muscles, and your size 6 jeans will all thank you.
Clearly, changing the way we get from place to place can dramatically improve our physical health. But it's not always easy to walk or ride our bicycles around. Many of our communities are designed to cater to the automobile at the exclusion of all other types of transportation. This is unfair to people who cannot drive (often, children, the elderly, and the handicapped), people who cannot afford to drive or own a car, and to people who simply would prefer to go for a walk or bike ride every day instead of sitting in a car.
Where and how we place developments and infrastructure can either encourage or discourage active lifestyles. A new mall, for example, built off of a highway ensures that people can only access it by getting into their cars. But a new mall built near existing neighborhoods, other shops, or employment, can be linked to these things with sidewalks and bicycle lanes, encouraging people to walk or bike to the stores.
This section helps communities learn about how to create places for people to walk or bicycle.
Transportation Strategies: Improving Mobility in New Jersey
This section of the Smart Growth Gateway is possible thanks to the Greater Mercer Transportation Management Association. Visit their website at gmtma.org/.