Health and Fitness

Strategies That Improve Public Health Through Physical Activity

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TDM Encyclopedia

Victoria Transport Policy Institute

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About This Encyclopedia

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Updated August 27, 2007


This chapter discusses ways to improve public fitness and health by more active transportation, including walking, cycling, running and skating. Inadequate physical activity is a major contributor to many diseases. Transportation and land use policies that result in even modest increases in aerobic exercise could provide significant health benefits, equal or greater than the benefits of traffic safety programs. Many TDM strategies increase active transportation by improving nonmotorized travel conditions, creating land use patterns that are more suitable for nonmotorized travel, and by encouraging shifts from driving to nonmotorized travel.

 

 

Introduction

Transportation facilities and activities can affect health in many ways, including crash risk, physical activity, air and noise pollution impacts, transport related stress, mental health and community cohesion (Litman, 2005; Frank, Kavage and Litman, 2006). Health objectives (including new ones, such as encouraging physical activity) are becoming more important in transport planning (Davis, 2005), although there is still limited integration in transportation analysis and planning, resulting in policies that often conflict. For example, many transportation policies and planning practices, such as generous minimum parking requirements and funding dedicated to roadway improvements that cannot be used for other modes, continue to favor automobile dependency, although that contradicts many health objectives. Transportation Demand Management strategies tend to help achieve health objectives, as well as other planning objectives. This chapter discusses specific transportation-related health objectives and supportive TDM strategies.

 

 

Physical Activity and Health

Physical Activity refers to physical exercise. Inadequate physical activity is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis and some cancers (Killingsworth and Lamming, 2001). Research by Franco, et al (2005) indicates that moderate physical exercise increases average longevity by 1.3 and 3.7 years in typical middle-age Americans. A sedentary lifestyle ranks second only to smoking as a lifestyle risk for disease and premature death, contributing to more than 10% of all deaths in the United States, representing direct economic costs of $150 billion annually (Surgeon General, 1999).

 

Diseases Associated With Inadequate Physical Activity

·       Heart disease

·       Hypertension

·       Stroke

·       Diabetes

·       Obesity

·       Osteoporosis

·       Depression

·       Some types of cancer

 

 

Even modest increases in physical activity tend to reduce mortality rates for both older and younger adults (Sallis, et al., 2004). Health experts recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day, at least 5 days a week, in intervals of ten-minutes or more, and additional exercise up to 60 minutes per day of vigorous physical activity appears to provide additional health benefits (Cavill, 2001; www.cdc.gov). ICLEI (2003) provides a method for valuing the health benefits of more active transportation.

 

Center for Disease Control Physical Activity Recommendations (www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/physical/recommendations/index.htm)

 

Adults should:

·       Engage in moderate-intensity physical activities for 30-60 minutes on 5 or more days of the week. (Moderate-intensity means that a person feels some exertion but can carry on a conversation comfortably during the activity. Examples include walking briskly, dancing, easy swimming or bicycling on level terrain.)

OR

·       Engage in vigorous-intensity physical activity 3 or more days per week for 20 or more minutes per occasion. (Vigorous-intensity physical activity results in a significant increase in heart and breathing rate. Examples include jogging, chopping wood, participating in high-impact aerobic dancing, swimming continuous laps or bicycling uphill.)

 

Adolescents should:

·       Be physically active daily, or nearly every day, as part of play, games, sports, work, transportation, recreation, physical education, or planned exercise.

·       Adolescents should engage in three or more sessions per week of activities that last 20 minutes or more at a time and that require moderate to vigorous levels of exertion.

 

Elementary school-aged children should:

·       Accumulate at least 30-60 minutes of age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate physical activity from a variety of activities on all, or most, days of the week.

·       An accumulation of more than 60 minutes, and up to several hours per day, of age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate activity is encouraged.

·       Some of the child’s activity each day should be in periods lasting 10 to 15 minutes or more and include moderate to vigorous activity. This activity will typically be intermittent in nature, involving alternating moderate to vigorous activity with brief periods of rest and recovery.

·       Children should not have extended periods of inactivity.

 

 

The total health costs of inadequate physical activity are greater than those resulting from traffic crashes, although traffic crashes tend to injure and disable people at a younger age than most sedentary lifestyle illnesses and so crash health costs rank relatively high when measured in terms of Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL) (“Crash Costs,” Litman, 2005). According to a major study by the Harvard University School of Public Health, cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of premature death and disability in developed countries, causing ten times as many lost years of productive life as road crashes (Murray, 1996, Table 2). Even modest reductions in these illnesses could provide even greater overall health benefits than large reductions in traffic crashes.

 

There are many ways to be physically active. Some people play sports or exercise regularly in a gym, but these cost money and require special time and effort, so most people will not participate in such activities regularly over their full lifetime (Sevick, et al., 2000). Walking is the most popular form of physical activity, and many experts believe that more Nonmotorized Transportation (Walking and Bicycling, and their variants such as Wheelchairs and Small Wheeled Modes, also called Active Modes and Human Powered Transport) is the most practical and effective way to improve public fitness. One major study concluded, “Regular walking and cycling are the only realistic way that the population as a whole can get the daily half hour of moderate exercise which is the minimum level needed to keep reasonably fit” (Physical Activity Task Force, 1995). Health experts recommend that people walk 10,000 steps or about 5 miles per day for basic physical fitness.

 

Active transportation is declining in most industrialized countries. Table 1 indicates changes in walking and cycling recorded by the U.S. National Personal Transportation Surveys between 1977 and 1995. Although cycling increased slightly, walking, which is much more common, declined by more than 40%. Similar patterns have occurred in most other countries.

 

Table 1                        Personal Trips By Active Modes (NPTS)

 

1977

1983

1990

1995

Walk

9.3%

8.5%

7.2%

5.5%

Bicycle

0.6%

0.8%

0.7%

0.9%

Total

9.9%

9.3%

7.9%

6.4%

 

 

Inadequate physical activity is often viewed as an individual problem (“fat people are lazy”), but public policies and design factors can also have significant effects on the amount of physical activity that occurs in a community (Sallis, et al., 2004). Current transportation and land use patterns tend to create barriers to walking and cycling (Evaluating Nonmotorized Transportation). Research summarized by Jackson and Kochtitzky (2001) and Killingsworth (2003) indicate that Automobile Dependency and urban sprawl can be considered a health risk, while more balanced transportation systems and TDM programs can contribute to improved public health.

 

Communities with suitable conditions have much higher levels of walking and cycling (Land Use Impacts on Transportation). Ewing, et al., (2003) found an association between sprawl and health risks including less physical activity, increased obesity and increased hypertension. Frank, Andersen and Schmid (2004) found that each quartile increase in land-use mix (number of non-residential destinations within one kilometer of each house) is associated with a 12.2% reduction in the likelihood of obesity. Each additional hour spent in a car per day was associated with a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity. Conversely, each additional kilometer walked per day was associated with a 4.8% reduction in the likelihood of obesity.

 

Some researchers argue that there is little empirical evidence that automobile-dependent land use patterns are unhealthy, pointing out that in the U.S., residents of suburbs tend to be fitter than urban residents (Schwartz, 2002; Utt, 2003), but such aggregate analysis indicates little about potential fitness and health benefits that could occur if urban and suburban residents were more physically active. In an international comparison of travel patterns and health impacts, Pucher and Dijkstra (2003) found that cyclists in the Netherlands and Germany have lower per mile and per trip crash injury rates, and that residents of countries with higher rates of walking and cycling have much lower rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension than in the U.S. For example, residents of the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden have obesity rates only a third of those in the U.S., and Germany’s is only half as high; residents of these four European countries live an average of 2.5 to 4.4 years longer while spending half as much on health care as in the U.S.

 

Research by Sturm (2005) found that, accounting for demographic factors such as age, race/ethnicity, educational achievement and income, the frequency of self-reported chronic medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, hypertension and cancer increased with sprawl. On average there are 1,260 reported chronic medical conditions per 1,000 population. A 50-point change from more to less sprawling cities is associated with 96 fewer conditions. Shifting from a very sprawled region such as San Bernardino, California to a less sprawled region such as Boston, Massachusetts would result in a reduction of 200 chronic medical conditions per 1,000 population, a 16% reduction. This effect appears to be particularly strong for the elderly and lower-income people. Increased street connectivity is significantly associated with reductions in hypertension and heart disease, apparently reflecting the increased walking that results.

 

Besser and Dannenberg (2005) used the 2001 National Household Travel Survey to analyze the amount of walking associated with public transit trips, and factors that affect this activity. They found that Americans who use public transit on a particular day spend a median of 19 daily minutes walking to and from transit, and that 29% achieve the recommended 30 minutes of physical activity a day solely by walking to and from transit. In multivariate analysis, rail transit, lower-income, age, minority status, being female, being a nondrivers or zero-vehicle household, and population density were all positively associated with the amount of time spent walking to transit.

 

The Travel Smart TDM program in Perth, Australia has reduced automobile use by 14% and increased active transportation by 20% (www.dpi.wa.gov.au/travelsmart). A major study found that people who regularly commute by bicycle have a 40% reduction in mortality compared with people who do not cycle to work, which suggests that the incremental risks of bicycle transportation are far outweighed by health benefits, at least for experienced adult cyclists riding in a bicycle-friendly community (Andersen, et al, 2000). Another study concludes that heart disease would decline 5-10% if one-third of short trips shifted from driving to bicycling or walking (BAC, 1995).

 

The health benefits of Nonmotorized Facilities such as paths and sidewalks extend to all sectors of society including the elderly and the disabled, not just people who run or cycle for exercise. Recreational walking and cycling are among the most common forms of physical exercise. Most cycling and walking takes place on public roads. This suggests that there are justifications to fund Pedestrian and Cycling improvements through both transportation and recreation budgets.

 

Although traffic safety is widely recognized as an important objective in conventional transportation planning, increased physical activity is not. Most planners consider it desirable to accommodate walking and cycling where there is demand, but not at the expense of motorized modes. Recognizing increased physical activity as a transportation planning goal would give greater emphasis to projects that improve nonmotorized travel conditions, and policies that encourage shifting from automobile travel to walking, cycling and transit, since most transit trips include nonmotorized links.

 

World Health Organization Charter on Transport, Environment and Health

www.who.dk/London99/transport02e.htm

 

Physical Activity

Lack of physical activity is one of the major risk factors for coronary heart disease, which is the leading cause of mortality in Europe. On the other hand, walking and cycling as daily activities can promote health by providing physical activity, decreasing noise, and air pollution.

 

The health benefits of regular physical activity can be summarized as:

50% reduction in the risk of developing coronary heart diseases (i.e. a similar effect to not smoking).

50% reduction in the risk of developing adult diabetes.

50% reduction in the risk of becoming obese.

30% reduction in the risk of developing hypertension. 10/8 mm Hg decline in blood pressure in hypertensive subjects (i.e. a similar effect to that obtained from antihypertensive drugs).

Other effects include reduced osteoporosis, relief of symptoms of depression and anxiety, and the prevention of falls in the elderly.

 

A total of 30 minutes’ brisk walking or cycling on most days of the week, even if carried out in 10–15 minute episodes, is effective in providing these health benefits.

 

The average trip by walking in Europe is about 1.5 km and the average cycling trip is about 3.5 km, each taking about 15 minutes to make: two such trips each day would be enough to provide the recommended “daily dose” of physical activity.

 

Psychosocial Effects

Certain patterns of transport have a broad range of effects on mental health, including risk-taking and aggressive behaviors, depression, and post-traumatic psychological effects of crashes.

 

High levels of traffic can cause social isolation and limit interpersonal networks of support, factors which have been found to be associated with higher mortality and morbidity in the elderly.

 

Children who have the opportunity of playing unhindered by street traffic and without the presence of adults have been found to have twice as many social contacts with playmates in the immediate neighbourhood as those who could not leave their residence unaccompanied by adults due to heavy traffic.

 

The fear of collisions is reported by parents as being the main reason for taking children to school by car. This hinders the development of children’s independence and reduces their opportunities for social contact. It also has an influence on children’s attitudes towards car use and personal mobility in adulthood.

 

The lack of physical activity, including walking and cycling, is associated with mental ill health, including depression.

 

 

Traffic Risk

In many situations, nonmotorized travel has a higher per mile crash rate than motorized travel (Traffic Safety). In the United States, pedestrian fatalities are 36 times higher, and bicycling fatalities are 11 times higher, than car occupant fatalities per km traveled. This additional risk can be minimized, however, as shown by much lower fatality rates in The Netherlands and Germany (Pucher and Dijkstra, 2000). Pedestrian fatalities per billion km walked are less than a tenth as high, and bicyclist fatalities are only a quarter as high, das in the United States.

 

Changes in individual pedestrian and bicyclist behavior can also reduce current crash risk. A combination of improved cycling skills, increased helmet use, improved night lighting, and reduced drunk cycling and driving could reduce bicyclist fatality rate per mile by half or more. Traffic Calming and appropriate Nonmotorized Planning can reduce risk further.

 

Bicycle Fatality Reduction Strategies

Based on American Society of Civil Engineers’ Human Powered Transport Subcommittee analysis of bicyclist behavior and additional sources. Risk factors overlap and are therefore not cumulative.

                                                                                    Potential Fatality Reduction

1.  Teaching riders to avoid common mistakes.               50% or more.

2.  Helmet use.                                                              40% to 50%

3.  Eliminating intoxicated bicyclists.                              16% or more

4.  Eliminate intoxicated automobile drivers.                   16%

5.  Enforcing nighttime lighting requirements.                  10% or more

6.  Teaching motorists to share the road with bicyclists.   5% or more

7.  Infrastructure improvements.                                     Significant

 

 

Based on this analysis, a responsible bicyclist who follows traffic rules is estimated to have a per trip crash fatality rate approximately equal to that of non-interstate automobile occupants, and poses a minimal accident risk to other road users, resulting in a reduction in overall fatalities compared with motor vehicle driving. Walking can have even lower risks. There is no evidence that shifting travel from driving to non-motorized travel is a public health risk, especially if safety education and facility improvements are provided.

 

 

Demand for Active Transportation

There appears to be significant latent demand for nonmotorized travel. That is, people would walk and bicycle more frequently if they had suitable facilities and resources. A U.S. survey found that 17% of adults claim they would sometimes bicycle commute if secure storage and changing facilities were available, 18% would if employers offered financial incentives, and 20% would if they had safer cycling facilities (Bicycling Magazine, 1991). Table 2 summarizes a recent Canadian public survey indicating high levels of interest in cycling and walking.

 

Table 2                   Active Transportation Survey Findings (Environics, 1998)

 

Cycle

Walk

Currently use this mode for leisure and recreation.

48%

85%

Currently use this mode for transportation.

24%

58%

Would like to use this mode more frequently.

66%

80%

Would cycle to work if there “were a dedicated bike lane which would take me to my workplace in less than 30 minutes at a comfortable pace.”

 

70%

 

Support for additional government spending on bicycling facilities.

82%

 

 

 

Appropriate facilities and roadway improvements for walking and cycling (sidewalks, crosswalks, multi-use paths, bike lanes, traffic calming) can increase nonmotorized travel. One study found a significant increase in walking activity and willingness to allow children to exercise outdoors after a Traffic Calming program was implemented in an urban neighborhood (Morrison, Hilary Thomson and Mark Petticrew, 2004). Residents of communities that have suitable walking and cycling conditions use nonmotorized modes more for both recreation and transportation than communities that do not (Land Use Impacts on Transportation). One study found that each mile of bikeway per 100,000 residents increases bicycle commuting 0.075 percent, all else being equal (Nelson and Allen, 1997). This indicates that such facilities provide consumer benefits.

 

 

Strategies that Encourage Physical Activity

Nonmotorized Transportation Improvements

Nonmotorized Transportation Planning, Pedestrian Improvements and Bicycle Improvements help create facilities and travel conditions that are more suitable for active transportation. Public trail development can be particularly important for encouraging nonmotorized transportation and recreation (Rail-to-Trails Conservancy).

 

Nonmotorized Encouragement

Nonmotorized Transportation Encouragement programs include a variety of activities to support and encourage use of active transportation, and increase the number of people using these modes. These can be supported by TDM Marketing programs.

 

Traffic Calming

Traffic Calming includes a variety of roadway design features that reduce vehicle traffic speeds and volumes. This tends to create roadway conditions that are safer and more comfortable for walking and cycling.

 

Car-Free Planning and Vehicle Restrictions

Comprehensive Car-free Planning and Vehicle Restrictions can improve nonmotorized accessibility and encourage active transportation. Campus Transportation Management can be a way to create and improve Car-Free areas in campus areas.

 

Land Use Management Strategies

Land use management strategies such as New Urbanism and Smart Growth are the basis for creating more Accessibility communities with attractive, walkable neighborhoods. These land use patterns can increase walking and cycling (Land Use Impacts on Transportation).

 

Street Reclaiming

Street Reclaiming is a process for increasing the social, cultural, recreational and economic activity in neighborhood streets. It involves reducing vehicle traffic volumes and speeds, and creating more attractive street environments, to encourage interaction and increase residents’ involvement in their community.

 

Universal Design

Universal Design refers to pedestrian facility designs that accommodate the widest range of potential users, including people with disabilities and other special needs. Universal Design supports accessibility, and encourages active transportation, particularly by people with physical disabilities who often have difficulty obtaining exercise. Improved accessibility can provide significant health and emotional benefits to people with physical disabilities (Jackson and Kochtitzky, 2001).

 

School Transport Management

School Transport Management encourages parents, students and staff to reduce automobile trips and use alternative modes for travel to and from schools. This improves walking and cycling conditions and encourages active transportation.

 

Address Security Concerns

Efforts to Address Security Concerns faced by pedestrians and cyclists can help increase active transportation.

 

Transit Improvements

Transit and nonmotorized transportation are complementary transportation modes: most transit trips involve walking or cycling links, and pedestrians and cyclists often rely on public transit to travel longer distances. Travel surveys indicate that the average walking distance involved in a transit trip is five to ten times longer than the average walking distance of an automobile trip. Transit Oriented Development can be a catalyst for more pedestrian-oriented land use patterns.

 

Designing Buildings To Favor Walking

Some new buildings are specifically designed to encourage walking, specifically use of stairs rather than elevators (Naik, 2005).

 

New Buildings Help People Fight Flab

Gautam Naik, The Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2005

 

In July 2007, when students of Virginia Commonwealth University attend classes in a redesigned business-school building, they'll face a new hurdle: a staircase. Most of the 3,000 students now at the Richmond, Va., business school take elevators to reach classrooms. But in the new structure, the elevators will be especially slow-moving. They will also be tucked away at the rear, while the atrium will feature a prominent set of stairs – 28 to get to the second floor, and a total of 76 to get all the way up to the fourth floor.

 

A key reason for the new design: keeping faculty and students fit.

 

“Clients are making a conscious decision to promote physical activity” in the workplace, says Philip Dordai, an architect at Hillier Architecture of Princeton, N.J., which is designing the new VCU business-school building and has also been involved in other, similar projects.

 

Buildings have long been designed so people can get from one place to another with minimum physical effort. Now, in a bid to fight a rising tide of obesity, companies, universities and other institutions are embracing the opposite idea: buildings that force employees to move around a lot more.

 

At the California Department of Transportation's new district headquarters in Los Angeles, elevators stop on every third floor -- an inducement for those who can to use the stairs. (There's a separate elevator for the disabled.) Phone giant Sprint Nextel Corp.'s corporate campus in Overland Park, Kan., has pathways and a covered arcade, to encourage employees to walk even in inclement weather.

 

Health-related design has growing appeal for some of the biggest users of real estate -- companies that rent office space. When architects were designing a lab for Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG in San Diego, they had the option to build an enclosed corridor linking the five buildings. Instead, they constructed an outdoor, shaded walkway. Not only has this provided more indoor space for the labs, but the idea of a walk outside on a nice day (almost every day in San Diego) encourages employees to meet and spontaneously interact -- an outcome that scientific-research firms and universities are keen to promote.

 

To see if he could persuade people to use stairs instead of elevators, Luuk Engbers, a human-movement scientist at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, last year began a 12-month experiment in a seven-story office building in The Hague. At the entrance, he printed footprints on the floor that led toward the staircase. Stickers on the elevator cheekily asked would-be passengers how long they had been waiting -- and exhorted them to walk up and lose some calories instead. The staircase itself was lined with health-related posters and special mirrors that made people look slim. “We wanted to make them look better than they do in an elevator mirror,” explains Mr. Engbers.

 

Employees at a similar building nearby were studied as a control group. The result: People in the first building took the stairs twice as much, and covered more floors with each use, than those in the control building.

 

Even small steps can yield a worthwhile benefit. James Sallis, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, estimates that climbing up stairs for just two minutes a day lets a person burn an extra 5,800 calories, or 1.6 pounds, a year. In theory, that should wipe out the average weight gain of one pound per year for Americans, based on data collected for the years 1990-2000, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

 

Walking up the stairs to their office may be all the exercise many employees ever get. Leisure-time physical activity in the U.S. increased in the late 1990s but then remained at the same level before dropping in 2004. The percentage of American adults who engaged in regular leisure-time physical activity fell to 30.2% in 2004 from 32.8% the previous year, according to the CDC survey.

 

Barbara Hansen, a 51-year-old technical writer working at Sprint Nextel's Overland Park corporate campus, weighed 256 pounds in March 2004. Her job requires her to sit for hours at a time in front of a computer. But today, Ms. Hansen weighs 196 pounds – 60 pounds lighter. Her blood pressure has returned to a normal level, and she no longer takes Crestor, a cholesterol-reducing drug.

 

Ms. Hansen attributes her weight reduction to healthier eating, regular visits to a fitness center and plenty of walking -- thanks to the design of Sprint's large campus. Employees are encouraged to bike or jog during their lunch hour; the stairwells are brightly lit and hung with paintings; the elevators are a little slower than usual. Ms. Hansen says she now climbs the stairs everyday to her office, five floors up.

 

 

Shifting Road Space From Automobile to Nonmotorized Modes

Converting vehicle traffic lanes to cycling lanes and wider sidewalks can improve nonmotorized travel conditions and shift travel from motorized to nonmotorized modes.

 

Neural Aging Walks Tall: Aerobic Activity Fuels Elderly Brains, Minds

Science News Online (www.sciencenews.org/20040221/fob1.asp), 21 Feb. 2004, by Bruce Bower.

 

 

Seniors interested in pumping up their brains and maintaining an attentive edge might consider taking this inexpensive prescription: Go for a walk every 2 or 3 days. Don’t sweat it, but make an effort. Limit each walk to between 10 and 45 minutes.

 

That’s the conclusion, at any rate, of two new studies that demonstrate for the first time in people that physical fitness, whether achieved on one’s own or through a brief aerobic-training course, induces brain changes associated with improved performance on an attention-taxing task.

 

“Even moderate cardiovascular activity of the sort that is within reach of most healthy older adults results in improved neural functioning and may help to extend or enhance independent living,” says neuroscientist Arthur F. Kramer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kramer directed the new studies with his colleague Stanley J. Colcombe.

 

Prior research showed that mice score higher on tests of learning, memory, and attention after regularly exercising on a running wheel for several weeks. In the animals, this training boosts the brain’s blood supply, increases connections between neurons, and promotes the development of new brain cells.

 

Moderate exercise works similarly in people, Kramer and Colcombe’s team reports in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists first assessed physical fitness in 41 older adults, ages 58 to 77, after each walked 1 mile. Participants then performed an attention task in which they viewed arrays of five left-or-right-pointing arrows and used computer keys to indicate whether the central arrow pointed left or right.

During testing, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner measured the rate of blood flow in specific regions of each volunteer’s brain.

 

Adults identified as particularly fit made judgments about the arrows faster and with equal accuracy compared with their less-fit peers. Moreover, the fMRI data show that highly fit seniors exhibited intense blood flow in frontal-brain areas implicated in allocating attention and minimal neural activity in a frontal region that usually perks up in situations of indecision.

 

In a second study, 15 elderly volunteers accomplished attention tasks markedly faster after completing a 6-month aerobic-training course than they had before the course started. Participants gradually built up to walking for 45 minutes at a moderate pace three times each week. By the end of the study, these volunteers’ brain activity resembled that of highly fit seniors in the first study.

 

In contrast, 14 seniors who completed a 6-month course of stretching and toning exercises, but not aerobic exercise, showed little improvement on the attention task. Their brain activity was similar to that of less-fit seniors in the first study.

 

Colcombe and Kramer’s studies are “an impressive achievement,” remarks psychologist Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Further research should examine whether aerobic training enhances seniors’ performance on other psychological tasks and whether such improvements confer any advantages in daily life, Salthouse says. Kramer and his colleagues are now testing whether aerobic training might improve seniors’ driving skills.

 

 

Healthy Community Design

Below is a list of specific planning practices that help create healthier communities:

 

·       Strategic planning. Is there a comprehensive community vision which individual land use and transportation decisions should support?

 

·       Self-contained community. Are common services such as shops, medical services, transit service, schools and recreation facilities located within convenient walking distance of houses and each other? Is there a good jobs/housing ratio within a 2-mile radius?

 

·       Walkability. Do streets have sidewalks? Are sidewalks well designed, maintained and connected, and suitable for people using wheelchairs and pushing strollers and carts? Are streets easy to cross, even by people with disabilities?

 

·       Cycling. Are there adequate bike paths, lanes and routes? Are there cycling skills training and law enforcement programs? Are there bike racks and changing facilities at worksites?

 

·       School access. Are most children able to walk or bicycle to school? Are walking and cycling condition around the school adequate. Are there programs to improve walking and cycling, and encourage use of alternative modes for travel to school?

 

·       Mixed income communities. Are there a mix of housing types and prices, allowing lower income and disabled people to live in the community? Are there programs to insure affordable housing is located in accessible, multi-modal areas where residents can easily walk to public services such as stores, medical clinics and transit stops?

 

·       Sense of place. Does the community have a strong sense of identity and pride? Does the neighborhood have a name?

 

·       Transit service quality. Does the neighborhood have high quality public transit, with more than 20 buses or trains a day (less than half-hour headways) and little crowding during peak periods?

 

·       Parking management. Are parking requirements flexible, so developers and building managers can reduce their parking supply in exchange for implementing a parking management program?

 

·       Roadway and walkway connectivity. Are streets and paths well-connected, with short blocks and minimal cul-de-sacs. Are streets as narrow as possible, particularly in residential areas and commercial centers. Are traffic management and traffic calming to control vehicle impacts.

 

·       Complete streets. Are streets designed to accommodate walking, cycling and public transit, and comfortable and convenient for activities such as strolling, playing, shopping, sightseeing, eating and special events?

 

·       Site design and building orientation. Are buildings to be oriented toward city streets, rather than set back behind large parking lots?

 

·       Transportation demand management. Are TDM strategies and programs implemented to the degree that they are cost effective? Do employers have incentives to implement commute trip reduction programs? Is there a local transportation management association?

 

·       Greenspace. Are there efforts to preserve greenspace, particularly wild areas such as streams, shorelines and forests?

 

 

To help consumers, real estate professionals and planning practitioners apply these concepts the Healthy Location Index below indicates the degree to which a particular site or neighborhood reflects healthy community planning principles.

 

Table 3            Healthy Community Index Calculations

Feature

How to Calculate

Points

Sidewalks on block

No (0 points) Yes (10 points)

 

Portion of local streets with sidewalks.

Range from 0 points for no street within ½ kilometer have sidewalks up to 10 points for all streets have sidewalks.

 

Portion of local streets and paths that accommodate wheelchairs.

Range from 0 points for no street within ½ kilometer with sidewalks that accommodate wheelchairs, up to 10 points for all streets with sidewalks that accommodate wheelchairs.

 

School walkability

10 minus number of minutes required for a child to walk safety to school. 0 if walking to school is not feasible for a typical child.

 

Cycling conditions

Portion of streets within 1 kilometer that safely accommodate bicycles, rated from 0 to 10.

 

Neighborhood service destinations

One point for each of the following located within ½ kilometer convenient walking distance, up to 10 maximum: grocery store, restaurant, video rental shop, public park, recreation center, library.

 

Public transit service quantity

Number of peak period buses per hour within ½ kilometer, up to 10 maximum.

 

Public transit service quality

Portion of peak-period transit vehicles that are clean and comfortable from 0 (all vehicles are dirty or crowded) up to 10 (all vehicles are clean and have seats available).

 

Local traffic speeds

Portion of vehicle traffic within 1-kilometer that have speeds under 40 kilometers per hour, from 10 (100%) to 0 (virtually none).

 

Air Pollution

10 minus one for each exceedance of air quality standards.