A provocative article by Christiaan Abildso about a Complete Streets bill, HB 4074 that the WV House of Delegates will vote on Wednesday Feb. 8.

You could just say, "Please support HB4074". How hard is that?

Our delegates are anthony.barill@wvhouse.gov barbaraf@wvhouse.gov charlene.marshall@wvhouse.gov amanda.pasdon@wvhouse.gov

Frank

Begin forwarded message:

From: Christiaan Abildso cabildso@yahoo.com Date: February 4, 2012 4:08:20 PM EST To: "opinion@dominionpost.com" opinion@dominionpost.com Subject: Time sensitive opinion piece, must be in by Tuesday, Feb 7 (if fit to print) - thank you Reply-To: Christiaan Abildso cabildso@yahoo.com

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!