By walking twenty minutes each way from the metro in Atlanta to her job at the American Cancer Society, Lois Fletcher has lost more than thirty pounds. It’s a remarkable story about how tweaking your day to day routine can have profound influences on your health. But as researchers who study public health will tell, its really not all that surprising. Below are the conclusions of several studies that clearly illustrate the link between good transit and public health:

• Train commuters walk significantly more steps per day (+30%) than automobile commuters. Train commuters are also 4 times more likely than car commuters to meet the recommended standard of 10,000 steps per day.” [Environment and Behavior]
• A study conducted in Shanghai found that women who reported regular exercise and cycling for transportation were at a 20–50% lower risk for early mortality than less active women. [American Journal of Epidemiology]
• 78% of riders from three walkable New Jersey train stations met the national standard for physical activity. As a whole, only 45% of Americans meet this recommended standard. Read the rest of this entry »

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Circled by freeways, Atlanta has some of the worst traffic in the United States. Photo by Nrbelex from Flickr.

Via Public Routes Blog, Peter Lindsay, a political scientist at Georgia State University, writes about the externalities of car use, arguing that if American car owners actually had to bear the total costs of cars - ie traffic, air pollution, respiratory diseases, etc. - the American love affair with the automobile would quickly fizzle. Dr. Lindsay sites two interesting statistics:

1. “U.S. estimates on the annual costs of car-induced air, water and noise pollution and its related health problems range from $230 billion to $940 billion.”

2. “…traffic congestion cost Americans $78.2 billion in 2005…”

To read more about the hidden costs of cars, see Crystal Davis’ post and one I wrote a little while back.

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