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Report Looks at Efforts to Increase Bicycling and Walking in the U.S.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation today released new data from the Federal Highway Administration's 2009 National Household Travel Survey which shows that both bicycling and walking trips have increased by 25 percent since 2001. The FHWA funded Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center included this data in The National Bicycling and Walking Study: A 15-Year Status Report. The report details trends and changes in bicycling and walking since 1994.

"This report demonstrates what we've been saying here at the Department," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "Americans want and need safe alternatives to driving. And by making biking and walking safer and more accessible, we'll be able to provide Americans with more choices and help foster more active, livable communities."

This story comes from the Austin Chronicle as the latest Congress for New Urbanism closed out its latest convention in May. 

Our Bodies, Our Cars: The links between urban design and public health

By Katherine Gregor

"Driving makes you fat."

That blunt assertion, by keynote speaker Lawrence Frank, captured the nut of the argument at New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places, the 18th national conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Held in Atlanta May 19-22, CNU 18 was co-organized with the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both organizations address public health through the design of the built environment, as well as human-powered transportation. National experts spoke to about 1,300 attendees – including a dozen or so from Aus tin – about how walkable, bikable compact communities encourage healthy lifestyles, where physical activity is part of everyday life. Participants considered how compact traditional neighborhoods and communities, where residents can walk to a corner store and have only a short commute (e.g., the kind of places where most presuburbia Americans lived), can reduce obesity, diabetes, asthma, cancer, and national health care costs.

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It's sobering to consider in a time of high unemployment that not only jobs but entire occupations disappear every day. We can hope that the jobs come back, but many occupations never will.

I guess that's the nature of progress, and they (the ubiquitous "they") tell us that new jobs are being created to replace the old ones. But what is worrisome here, in this land of Mom 'N Pop Culture, is the quality and meaning of these new occupations as compared to the disappearing ones. Particularly sad from the standpoint of the quality of our lives are the artisans who must face how progress - to use that term, if not sarcastically, at least loosely - has negated the value of their arts. Consider the following occupations. I mourn the loss of these honorable and sometimes ancient crafts.

Musician: I commented on the state of the music industry in my recent blog, "Worth Listening," but it's worse than the fact that everybody inside and outside the music industry seems preoccupied with the next big thing at the expense and so many perfectly wonderful little things. Yes, this is the phenomenon that gives us Lady Gaga and the idea that how wildly performers dress becomes more important than whether they have anything to actually say - not to mention any talent for saying it.

I am going to stray just a bit from my usual attempt at humor (ok, I think I make an attempt at humor anyway) today and vent a little. Maybe vent isn’t the right word, let’s just say I will share my opinion. I came across this article today at Boston.com about the lack of enforcement of the state’s littering laws. (see article here). However I think anyone who reads either this blog or comes to the Roadside Online website have one thing in common. We all love traveling the highways and byways of this great country of ours.

 As I spend my days behind the dirty windshield, I don’t see less litter as this article states, but I seem to see more. It only appears as less because of the increased number of litter crews out on the roads. Something which shouldn’t even be necessary. In a time when we all complain about increased taxes, tolls and the like, how much do you suppose we would all save if it wasn’t necessary to pay someone to pick up after us?