New Jersey Smart Growth Gateway: Solutions

Importance of Bicycling & Walking

Quality of Life Benefits
Smart Growth Benefits & Transportation Benefits
Public Health Benefits
Environmental Protection Benefits
Economic Benefits
Social Equity Benefits

Walking is the most basic form of transportation. Everyone is a pedestrian, including persons using wheelchairs and other forms of mobility assistance. Transit or automobile trips begin and end with a walk. Walking is often the quickest way to accomplish short trips in urban areas. Bicycling is the most energy efficient form of transportation ever devised, getting the energy equivalent of up to 1,500 miles per gallon (according to an MIT study).

Making walking and bicycling a priority in New Jersey's communities has a multitude of benefits, both for the individual and the community as a whole.

Increased bicycling and walking helps:

Improve New Jerseyans' health and well-being through regular exercise
Reduce traffic congestion

Reduce air and noise pollution
Reduce wear and tear on our roads
Reduce consumption of petroleum
Reduce crashes and property damage
Reduce the need for additional roads, travel lanes and parking

Providing bikeways and walkways also helps meet the needs of a large segment of the population who do not have access to an automobile - the "transportation disadvantaged":

The poor
The young
The elderly
People with disabilities
Others who do not use a motor vehicle for a variety of reasons.

Quality of Life Benefits

A variety of transportation choices means providing residents with multiple, safe and connected options including walking and bicycling to get from one place to the other. Doing this effectively requires adopting various smart growth techniques mixed land use, compact building design, adding bicycle lanes and sidewalks wherever possible, etc. that support multiple travel choices. Providing choice ultimately enables regions and communities to move toward a less congested transportation system, healthier lifestyles, more equitable communities, and a cleaner environment.

In a growing number of communities, bicycling and walking are considered as indicators of a community's livability a factor that has a profound impact on attracting businesses and workers as well as tourism. In cities and towns where people can regularly be seen out bicycling and walking, there is a palpable sense that these are safe and friendly places to live and visit.

Walkable and bikeable neighborhoods are places that better serve a range of users -- pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and automobiles and ultimately improve the quality of life that a community's residents can enjoy.

Smart Growth Benefits & Transportation Benefits

Providing people with more choices in housing, shopping, communities, and transportation is a key aim of smart growth. Communities are increasingly seeking these choices particularly a wider range of transportation options in an effort to improve beleaguered transportation systems. Traffic congestion is worsening across the country. Where in 1982 65 percent of travel occurred in uncongested conditions, by 1997 only 36 percent of peak travel occurred did so. According to the Texas Transportation Institute, congestion over the last several years has worsened in nearly every major metropolitan area in the United States.

The 1995 National Personal Transportation Survey found that approximately 40% of all trips are less than two miles in length which represents a 10-minute bike ride or a 30-minute walk. In fact, a 1995 Rodale Press survey found that Americans want the opportunity to walk or bike instead of drive: 40% of U.S. adults say they would commute by bike if safe facilities were available.

Bicycling and walking can help to reduce roadway congestion. Many streets and highways carry more traffic than they were designed to handle, resulting in gridlock, wasted time and energy, pollution, and driver frustration. Bicycling and walking require less space per traveler than automobiles. Roadway improvements to accommodate pedestrians and bicycles can also enhance safety for motorists. For example, adding paved shoulders on two-lane roads has been shown to reduce the frequency of run-off-road, head-on, and sideswipe motor vehicle crashes.

Coordinating land use and transportation planning by ensuring connectivity between pedestrian, bicycle, transit, and road facilities, can improve an entire community's transportation system.

Public Health Benefits

Public health, planning, and transportation officials can work together to increase the dangerously low levels of physical activity in the United States. In fact, the planning profession itself came about in response to concerns about urban public health problems. Overcrowded cities with inadequate sewage and waste disposal systems created an infectious disease crisis, and the planning profession's first task was to tackle the problem of sanitary reform in urban areas. Today, infectious disease is no longer an urban planning issue, but sedentary lifestyles are, and the planning profession can, once again, help solve this pressing problem.

In recent years public health researchers and practitioners have become increasingly aware of close linkages between community design, land development and investment patterns, and public health. Development and investment patterns characterized by suburban sprawl have been shown to have a variety of negative effects on public health while; conversely, smarter growth patterns can bring positive public health effects.

The public health benefits of simple activities like walking and bicycling are well documented. Regular exercise combats obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and has also been shown in some people to combat some forms of depression. It can also lower health care costs by keeping people healthy. In New Jersey, more than 50 percent of adults are overweight and diabetes has increased by more than 28 percent since 1995. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the year 2000, approximately 75% of New Jersey residents were either completely inactive or were insufficiently active to maintain good physical health. It doesn't take much to benefit from exercise walking for 30 minutes a day has been shown to produce many health benefits.

Nearly 25% of the trips made from home in our nation cover a distance of less than one mile, but 75% of those trips are made by automobile. If given the proper bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, many of these trips could be taken on foot or bicycle. Often, people simply don't walk because they can't their community does not provide them with a safe and attractive place to walk or bike. Data from the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey revealed that in 1995, 89% of all trips were made by automobile, while only 6.4% made were on foot and bicycle.

According to the CDC, a small increase in the percentage of trips that are walked rather than driven could result in significant public health benefits. Research has found that people walk more when they live in communities that have greater housing and population density and more street connectivity (i.e., streets lead to other streets and stores, rather than just ending in cul-de-sacs). Research also shows that people are more active in neighborhoods that are perceived as safe and that have recreational facilities nearby.

Towns with many attractive and safe bicycle lanes, trails, and sidewalks are obviously more likely to have residents who use these facilities. Walking is something that almost anybody can do, regardless of age, sex, race, or income.

Learn More About Planning, Public Health, and Physical Activity

"Travel impacts of urban form: implications from an analysis of two Seattle area travel diaries."
www.bts.gov/tmip/papers/tmip/udes/mccormack.htm
This paper concludes that "residents of the two mixed-use neighborhoods in Seattle traveled 27 percent fewer miles than the remainder of North Seattle, 72 percent fewer than the inner suburbs and 119 percent fewer than the outer suburbs."

Physical Activity and Health: A Report of the Surgeon General
www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/sgr/sgr.htm
Among the major findings in this report:
People who are usually inactive can improve their health and well-being by becoming even moderately active on a regular basis; physical activity need not be strenuous to achieve health benefits; greater health benefits can be achieved by increasing the amount (duration, frequency, or intensity) of physical activity.

State-Specific Prevalence of Participation in Physical Activity Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 1994
www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00043245.htm
To determine the proportion of adults who are participating in regular physical activity, regardless of the level of intensity, CDC analyzed data from the 1994 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). This report summarizes the results of that analysis, which indicates that, in every state surveyed, most adults are not participating in regular physical activity.

Healthy People Program
www.health.gov/healthypeople/
Healthy People is a national health promotion and disease prevention initiative that brings together national, state, and local government agencies; nonprofit, voluntary, and professional organizations; businesses; communities; and individuals to improve the health of all Americans, eliminate disparities in health, and improve years and quality of healthy life.

CDC's physical activity tips
www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/phys_act.htm
This website offers some ideas to help you plan how to fit physical activity into your day.

Environmental Protection Benefits

A host of environmental problems have resulted from our highly automobile-dependent society. Too much paved-over open space, chemical (gasoline, oil, transmission fluids, etc.) runoff into our groundwater and streams, air pollution, and dependence on oil.

Motor vehicle emissions represent 31% of total carbon dioxide, 81% of carbon monoxide, and 49% of nitrogen oxides released in the United States (Clean Air Council).
60% of the pollution created by auto emissions happens in the first few minutes after the car is turned on, meaning that short local trips are more polluting on a per-mile basis than longer trips. Luckily, these shorter trips can often be completed by foot or bicycle, if the community has the proper infrastructure to accommodate such activities.
A short, four-mile round trip by bicycle keeps about 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe. (WorldWatch Institute)
Air quality contributes to the deaths of 60,000 people per year nationwide. In urban areas with poor air quality, asthma is becoming a significant health concern. (Harvard University School of Public Health)

Economic Benefits

Bicycling and walking are extremely affordable forms of transportation. When safe facilities are provided for pedestrians and bicyclists, more people are able to be productive, active members of society. Car ownership and auto insurance (in fact, New Jersey has the highest auto insurance rates in the country) is expensive, and can consume a major portion of a person's income.

The cost of operating a car for one year is approximately $5,170 (AAA)
The cost of operating a bicycle for one year is $120 (League of American Bicyclists)
The average family has to work for more than 6 weeks to pay a year's car expenses, compared to less than one day needed to pay for a year's bicycle expenses (based on the U.S. Census, 1998 median family income figures)

According to Alan Thein Durning, in his 1996 book, The Car and the City, the average person spends 27 hours a month paying for the 32 hours a month he or she spends driving. Those 27 hours can make the difference between work and over-work. Furthermore, even with the large costs involved in owning and operating a car, it seems that automobile use is still heavily subsidized. Durning cites a Canadian study:

"[According to] Todd Litman, economist and principal of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, "The financial price Northwest motorists pay for each kilometer they drive is 32¢, but the full cost is 92¢." ... motorists make non-monetary payments in time and in assuming the risk of accidents worth another 30¢ per kilometer. So motorists pick up two thirds of the cost of driving. They bill other people, especially non-drivers, the poor, and taxpayers, for the remaining third. In economic terminology, these costs imposed on others are external.' "What offences are counted in the 30¢ a kilometer? The biggest costs, a nickel or more each, are air pollution, sprawl, congestion, accident risk imposed on others, and subsidies for parking. The smaller costs are worth pennies or fractions of pennies apiece. They include waste generation, water and noise pollution, land values lost to roads and parking facilities, and a litany of auto-related government expenses not fully recovered from fuel and vehicle taxes such as road construction and maintenance, protection of oil fields and supply lines, traffic policing, and emergency services at auto accidents."

-- Excerpted from Alan Thein Durning, The Car and the City, Northwest Environment Watch, Seattle, 1996

Social Equity Benefits

Transportation decisions can have significant equity impacts. Adequate mobility is essential for people to participate in society as citizens, employees, consumers and community members. It affects people's ability to obtain education, employment, medical service and other critical goods. In previous generations, most communities were organized to allow residents to walk or bicycle to neighborhood stores, schools and recreational activities, and many jobs. Work trips tended to be relatively short and centralized. Now, transportation systems and land use patterns are more automobile dependent, increasing the need to travel. This has dramatically reduced travel choices, particularly for non-drivers. In an auto-dependent culture, where the majority of the transportation infrastructure is devoted to people in cars, the people who cannot drive are unable to get around adequately. Such people are often unable to access jobs, schools, and shopping areas. Children, the handicapped, the elderly, and the poor are particularly affected.