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Research Roundup — health impacts, Road Diets, & Smart Growth
There are a number of notable new reports out that are worth looking at this week. Here’s a quick summary.
Bicycling health benefits outweigh risks
Dutch researcher Dr. Jeroen de Hartog and his colleagues have published a new study, “Do The Health Benefits Of Cycling Outweigh The Risks?” that concludes that the health benefits of bicycling are “substantially larger than the risks of cycling relative to car driving.” The authors quantify the risks and benefits and determine that the increased physical activity gained from switching from driving to biking lead to “about 9 times more gains in life years than the losses in life years due to increased inhaled air pollution doses and traffic accidents.”
Road Diets decrease crashes
The Federal Highway Administration released a study (PDF) using data from the Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) that shows that reducing four lane roads to three lane roads with center turning lanes and bike lanes in both direction can improve safety without reducing annual average daily traffic (AADT) volumes for roads with under 20,000 AADT. (For more on road diets, here’s the classic Road Diet reference, PDF, by Dan Burden.)
Measuring the impact of mixed use development on traffic generation models
Ken Barfield from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has a recent post on the way new models of traffic generation from mixed used development projects are re-shaping zoning requirements. The gist of it is that land-use policies can impact actual traffic generation, but up until now that hasn’t been taken into account in the formulas planners have used. This has resulted in excessive road and parking supply. In response, the Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a study to improve the method by which they estimate the impacts of mixed use designs on traffic.
Also see…
…the new Safe Routes to School guide (PDF) on implementing the program in low-income schools and communities, and…
… the Alliance for Biking & Walking’s Guide to Complete Streets Campaigns.
Darren Flusche
League Policy Director
Flusche joined the League in April 2009 and has a B.A. in history from Syracuse University and a Masters of Public Administration with a concentration in public policy analysis from New York University.
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July 9th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
When we proposed a road diet similar to what is described above (four lanes to three with dedicated turn bays and bike lanes) for a major arterial several years ago, motorists came out of the woodwork to oppose it and the proposal, unfortunately, was scuttled. The public had no understanding of how the turn bays and other features actually increased the carrying capacity of the road even with a lane in each direction removed. They did not see that the inboard travel lanes often were reduced in level of service significantly by left turning traffic.
So I would advise anyone reading this to do their homework, have your computer simulations up, running, and well defended, and prepare to answer the same questions we were obviously not sufficiently prepared for. In the final analysis, we now have a road with four lanes, turn bays, bus pullouts, bike lanes, and which, as I commonly joke with our traffic professionals here, has a Level of Service of AAA during rush hour! Its massively overbuilt. Now, finally, the public here in BombTown might understand why road diets work.
July 9th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Thanks, Khal, for posting that experience. It’s important to come to the conversation armed with data. This report offers different “crash modification factors” for different types of roads, so you can tailor your argument:
“If the proposed treatment site is more like the Iowa sites (i.e., U.S. or State routes with moderate AADTs in small urban areas), then the 47 percent reduction found in Iowa should be used. If the treatment site is part of a corridor in a suburban area of a larger city, then the 19 percent reduction should be used. If the proposed site matches neither of these site types, then the combined 29 percent reduction
is most appropriate.”
July 10th, 2010 at 10:24 am
It’s definitely crucial to stay fit these days. With all the bad food people eat, it’s not surprising why the number of heart related deaths have been rising.
July 16th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
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