Arlington 2015 Budget – Proposed Bike/Ped cuts and ABAC asks

[dasgeh]

Speaking of testifying in front of the Board with 24 hours notice, I’m typing up testimony. It would be very helpful to have some supporting research that I could cite to in written testimony (though I won’t go into in spoken remarks) on the following points. I was hoping that there may be one or two of you out there with some time today do dig a little and find some links to support these points:

• Bike trips are great for local business
• Bike trips develop community
• Bike trips are great for public safety
• Bike trips improve public health
• Bike trips save the County money in parking and road maintenance.

Thanks!

[Tim Kelley]

@dasgeh 111572 wrote:

Speaking of testifying in front of the Board with 24 hours notice, I’m typing up testimony. It would be very helpful to have some supporting research that I could cite to in written testimony (though I won’t go into in spoken remarks) on the following points. I was hoping that there may be one or two of you out there with some time today do dig a little and find some links to support these points:

• Bike trips are great for local business
• Bike trips develop community
• Bike trips are great for public safety
• Bike trips improve public health
• Bike trips save the County money in parking and road maintenance.

Thanks!

http://urbanful.org/2015/03/02/cities-and-businesses-discover-that-cycling-pays/

[PotomacCyclist]

Other articles re “bike trips are great for local business”:

2012 article with additional links in the article: http://usa.streetsblog.org/2012/03/23/why-bicyclists-are-better-customers-than-drivers-for-local-business/
2014 article: http://www.peopleforbikes.org/blog/entry/three-infographics-that-show-how-urban-economies-are-shifting-bikeward
2012 blog post from the Wall Street Journal, re benefits of bike lanes and pedestrian plazas in NYC: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/10/24/report-bike-lanes-pedestrian-plazas-good-for-businesses/

[chris_s]

@dasgeh 111572 wrote:

Speaking of testifying in front of the Board with 24 hours notice, I’m typing up testimony. It would be very helpful to have some supporting research that I could cite to in written testimony (though I won’t go into in spoken remarks) on the following points. I was hoping that there may be one or two of you out there with some time today do dig a little and find some links to support these points:

• Bike trips are great for local business
• Bike trips develop community
• Bike trips are great for public safety
• Bike trips improve public health
• Bike trips save the County money in parking and road maintenance.

Thanks!

Allow me to introduce you to http://www.peopleforbikes.org/statistics

I’d call it the best thing to ever happen to bike advocacy.

[scoot]

@chris_s 111588 wrote:

Allow me to introduce you to http://www.peopleforbikes.org/statistics

I’d call it the best thing to ever happen to bike advocacy.

Thanks Chris! That site looks like a great resource.

Since the proposed cuts will affect pedestrians as well, I hope that someone will speak up on their behalf also. Perhaps pedestrian issues will resonate more universally? After all, almost everyone becomes a pedestrian at some point during each day.

[PotomacCyclist]

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes/387595/

[dasgeh]

@chris_s 111588 wrote:

Allow me to introduce you to http://www.peopleforbikes.org/statistics

I’d call it the best thing to ever happen to bike advocacy.

That site is awesome. My time is limited. If anyone has time to pull out relevant stats for the points I made before, I’d appreciated. I can integrate anything posted by 4:45pm

@scoot 111593 wrote:

Thanks Chris! That site looks like a great resource.

Since the proposed cuts will affect pedestrians as well, I hope that someone will speak up on their behalf also. Perhaps pedestrian issues will resonate more universally? After all, almost everyone becomes a pedestrian at some point during each day.

Yes, these cuts would affect pedestrians as well, and the Pedestrian Advisory Committee also was not consulted. The Chair of the PAC will also be speaking tonight. Since I only have 3 minutes, I’m focusing on bikes. But I agree the ped angle is important too, and plan to say things like “Walkable/bikable neighborhoods are the soul of Arlington – People create the communities that make Arlington great, and communities are made when people get around on two feet and on two wheels.”

[dasgeh]

Also, point #1 is well supported – thank you, thank you, thank you. Any links for the other points would be really, really welcome.

[chris_s]

@dasgeh 111572 wrote:

• Bike trips improve public health

Urban cyclists are exposed to less accumulated air pollution than bus commuters.
Hertel, O., et al., 2008 – A proper choice of route significantly reduces air pollution exposure—A study on bicycle and bus trips in urban streets, Science of the Total Environment, 389, 58-70

Cyclists are exposed to less pollution than taxi or bus passengers.
Kaur, S., et al., 2006 – Exposure visualisation of ultrafine particle counts in a transport microenvironment, Atmospheric Environment, 40, 386-398

Kids who ride a school bus inhale up to a million times more vehicle emissions than the average person outside the bus
Marshall, J., and E. Behrentz, 2005 – Vehicle self-pollution intake fraction: Children’s exposure to school bus emissions, Environmental Science and Technology, 39, 2559-2563

When car travel restrictions reduced morning traffic by 23% during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, ozone concentrations decreased 28% and acute care visits for asthma decreased 41%.
Friedman, M., et al., 2001 – Impact of Changes in Transportation and Commuting Behaviors During the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta on Air Quality and Childhood Asthma, Journal of the American Medical Association, 285(7):897

Active commuting that incorporates cycling and walking is associated with an overall 11% reduction in cardiovascular risk.
Hamer, M., and Y. Chida, 2007 – Active commuting and cardiovascular risk: A meta-analytic review, Preventive Medicine, 46, 9-13

According to the federal government, biking for transportation can count toward the minimum 150 minutes/week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity recommended for physical health. It is also listed as the safest way to get physical activity.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008 – 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans

Women who walk or bike 30 minutes a day have a lower risk of breast cancer.
Luoto, R., et al., 2000 – The effect of physical activity on breast cancer risk: A cohort study of 30,548 women, European Journal of Epidemiology, 16, 973-80

30-60 minutes of daily physical activity such as biking to work is associated with low blood pressure in women and low hypertension in both genders.
Hu, G., et al., 2002 – Commuting, leisure-time physical activity, and cardiovascular risk factors in China, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 34, 234-8

Countries with the highest levels of cycling and walking generally have the lowest obesity rates.
Bassett, Jr., et al., 2008 – Walking, cycling, and obesity rates in Europe, North America, and Australia, Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 5, 795-814

Aerobic exercise [like bicycling] can improve self-esteem.
Fox and Corbin, 1999 – in Green Exercise: Complementary roles of nature, exercise and diet in physical and emotional well-being and implications for public health policy, CES Occasional Paper 2003-1, University of Essex

A study of nearly 2,400 adults found that those who biked to work were fitter, leaner, less likely to be obese, and had better triglyceride levels, blood pressure, and insulin levels than those who didn’t active commute to work.
Gordon-Larsen, P., et al., 2009 – Active commuting and cardiovascular disease risk, Archives of Internal Medicine, 169, 1216-1223

The risk of fatality while cycling is just once every 32 million kilometers (20 million miles), or over 800 times around the world.
CTC – Safety in numbers: Halving the risks of cycling

An adult cyclist typically has a level of fitness equivalent to someone 10 years younger and a life expectancy two years above the average.
Paffenbarger, R., et al., 1986., and Department for Transport, 2007 – in “Safety in numbers in England,” CTC

Cyclists on average live two years longer than non-cyclists and take 15% fewer days off work through illness.
CTC – Safety in numbers: Halving the risks of cycling

[PotomacCyclist]

No. 2 (Bike trips develop community) is more vague than the others, so it might be difficult to cite specific studies on that point. Most of the cites that I just skimmed through dealt with bike tourism on rural trails, in areas that wouldn’t have many tourists otherwise. Arlington doesn’t face that problem.

[dasgeh]

@PotomacCyclist 111602 wrote:

No. 2 (Bike trips develop community) is more vague than the others, so it might be difficult to cite specific studies on that point. Most of the cites that I just skimmed through dealt with bike tourism on rural trails, in areas that wouldn’t have many tourists otherwise. Arlington doesn’t face that problem.

Fair enough. I was thinking of the idea that when people bike (v. drive) they stay local, they talk to their neighbors, they see stuff happening around them, they travel on neighborhood roads. Some of what I said here: http://www.arlnow.com/2015/02/19/progressive-voice-bike-safety-also-helps-drivers/

[scoot]

Here’s a compelling one from the health statistics section at the peopleforbikes site:

http://bikeportland.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IntertwinePAObesityAssessment.pdf

Beil, K., 2011 – Physical Activity and the Intertwine: A Public Health Method of Reducing Obesity and Healthcare Costs

The author estimates that Portland’s investment in the Intertwine (its interconnected network of public trails and parks) saves the community $155M annually in healthcare expenses. Of this, $81M in healthcare savings is attributed to the trails alone ($55M for bicyclists, $26M for pedestrians) (page 6). BTW that works out to an average of $50 per person per year, using the population given in the paper. Methods are essentially a calorie computation and regression of healthcare expenses against body weights.

[Steve O]

@scoot 111593 wrote:

After all, almost everyone becomes a pedestrian at some point during each day.

Sadly, I’m not sure I would make this assertion. There is a sizable percentage of the population whose walking consists solely of going from their garage to their house and from their parking lot into their workplace and don’t actually walk along any street or cross a single intersection. Less true in Arlington, which is what we’re talking about here. But “almost everyone” on a broader scale is being generous, IMO.

[Steve O]

@scoot 111605 wrote:

BTW that works out to an average of $50 per person per year, using the population given in the paper.

$50/person/year x 225,000 Arlingtonians = ~$11 million/year

[Steve O]

Indirect, but if we believe that property values are a reflection of a better community and higher quality of life, then

Quote:

Residential property values are higher in walkable neighborhoods:
• Residential property values are 5.2% higher in more walkable London
neighborhoods.
• House values are 15.5% higher in walkable neighborhoods than in nonwalkable
areas, all else equal.
• Property values are 11% higher in New Urbanist neighborhoods than in
conventional, auto-dependent neighborhoods.

http://vibrantneo.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/VibrantNEO_EconomicBenefitsofCompleteStreets.pdf

And another study that shows property values increased in the Cincinnati area by $9 for each foot closer to a trail a house was:
http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=14300

[Author]

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