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Recommendations:

Benefits of Bicycling and Walking

Quality of Life Benefits

• Pedestrians add to the ambiance and security of streets.
• Providing a livable community is a necessary part of attracting and keeping businesses, and ensuring local communities remain competitive in the 21st century.

Health Benefits

• A number of research studies have shown a correlation between the built environment and the amount of routine physical activity, such as regular walking trips. A study published in the September 2003 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion titled “Relationship between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity, and Morbidity” found that people living in sprawling counties “were likely to walk less, weigh more, and have greater prevalence of hypertension than those living in compact counties.” An earlier study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed a direct relationship between the amount of walking and the age of the home in which a person lives, as a proxy for the style of urban residential development that is common in older versus newer communities. People who lived in older homes were found to walk more.

• Research conducted in 1999 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that “obesity and overweight are linked to the nation’s number one killer—heart disease—as well as diabetes and other chronic conditions.” The report also states that one reason for Americans» sedentary lifestyle is that “walking and cycling have been replaced by automobile travel for all but the shortest distances.”

• Today, there are nearly twice as many overweight children and almost three times as many overweight adolescents as there were in 1980. Results of the 1999 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that 13 percent of children and adolescents were overweight.
• Numerous studies have shown tremendous benefits from even a brief amount of light but routine exercise each day. Bicycling or walking to the store, school, or work also provides a time-efficient way of attaining the U.S. Surgeon General’s recommended daily allowance of physical exercise.

• Pedestrian and bicycle transportation offers more opportunities for people to socialize than driving alone in automobiles.

Given these many benefits, the result of a 1991 Harris Poll is not surprising. While only 5 percent of respondents currently walk or bicycle as their primary means of transportation, two-and-a-half times this number would prefer to walk or bicycle if better facilities were available.

Walking can have a tremendous health benefit.