TITLE: Act Now to Provide Transportation Options
The default is powerful. Ask grocery store owners who
influence your purchase by stocking certain items at eye level and at the end
of aisles. Ask software companies, who encourage downloading add-ons by
defaulting the settings to automatically download such add-ons unless you
“uncheck” a box. Ask large employers, who default employees into a 401k plan to
encourage retirement savings, rather than asking employees if they want a 401k.
Ask city planners, highway engineers, and zoning officials, who can influence default
health behavior options every day by designing our cities and streets to
encourage or discourage active transportation. What is your default
transportation “choice” every day?
According to national data, half of the 4 trips taken in an
average household are 3 miles or less. This trip is very comfortable on a bike –
in fact 85% of all bike trips are 3 miles or less - can burn up to 300 calories
even at a modest pace, and cost up to $3.75 to drive in an SUV according to AAA.
However, only 1.8% of these trips are ridden on a bike! Trips 1 mile or less encompass
27% of all daily trips yet 62% are taken in a vehicle. One mile is a very
comfortable distance to walk, can burn up to 100 calories, and costs roughly
$.75 in an SUV according to AAA. I save over $1,000 annually in transportation
costs (not to mention the health care cost savings) by walking, riding, and
using transit rather than driving my 7 mile round-trip daily.
Time is a common barrier to being more active. With so many
commitments, most of us have very little time to devote to exercising. But, what
do most of us do every day? Commute to work or school. This is a great captive moment where we must change the default option. What
influences our commuting decision? A major factor is how our streets are designed.
Bicycles have the same rights as vehicles on the road. Does the design of our
roadways make you feel comfortable or uncomfortable riding on the road? Pedestrians have facilities to accommodate them
– sidewalks and crosswalks. Does the design of our pedestrian infrastructure
provide a continuous, well lit, safe route for you to commute on foot? Public
transportation users walk 70 minutes more per week than non-users. Does the
design of our transportation system encourage you to walk or bike to public
transportation (happily, all Morgantown PRT stations and Mountain Line buses
are equipped with bicycle racks)?
We live in an urban area that is ripe to become a national
model for active commuting. However, our state maintained roads are dangerous
by design limiting such beneficial activity. Roughly 20% of the road mileage in
Morgantown is managed by the state, yet 66%
of all pedestrian-vehicle accidents in the last six years have occurred on
these roads! Unfortunately many roads managed by the state, such as South
University Avenue, have been designed to make driving the default option. We
must change this. Ask your local WV Legislative Delegates to support HB 4074
which would encourage the West Virginia Division of Highways to design our streets
so that users of all ages and
abilities have safe transportation options. Hurry, HB 4074 is set for House
Roads and Transportation Committee (on which our own Delegate Pasdon serves) vote
on Wednesday, February 8th! This is our chance to change the default!