Leveraging the Health Benefits of Active Transportation

Creating an Actionable Agenda for Transportation Professionals

The authors are researchers at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, Chapel Hil, North Carolina.  They provide a review of the health benefits of active transportation as a call to transportation planners to include health in the agenda for transportation planning, funding, and engineering considerations. 

  • They list many useful active transportation references (from TRB, Sustainable Communities Partnership, Federal Highway Administration, APHA, and the World Health Organization) and comment on the increasing dialog between the transportation and public health communities, highlighted by the formation of a new Health and Transportation Subcommittee of the TRB which will address active transportation and interface with other key groups such as the American Public Health Association’s Transportation, Health, and Equity Program.
  • The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) convened an expert panel: Measuring Walking and Cycling for Transportation in Feb 2012.  This meeting included representatives from state, local, and federal transportation agencies, and academia, including experts in public health, planning, environmental science, engineering and transportation.  The report of this meeting will be made availabe to the public.
  • Issues covered in the article overview include: benefits of walking and biking, addressing barriers, environments and facilities, connecting with transit, partnering with other agencies, and collaborative endeavors.

Sandt L, Pullen-Seufert N, Lejeunesse S Gelinne D. (2012). Leveraging the Health Benefits of Active Transportation:  Creating an Actionable Agenda for Transportation Professionals.TR News, May/June(280), 18-25.

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