[image_credit]MnDOT[/image_credit][image_caption]The walking rates were roughly the same among men and women, but men were three times more likely to cycle.[/image_caption]
Those discouraging findings underscore that “much more needs to be done” to make active forms of transportation safer and more convenient, say the study’s authors.
Federal funding for policies, programs and infrastructure that encouraging walking and bicycling more than tripled between 2000 and 2018, from $297 million to $916 million. Yet that higher amount still represents only about 2 percent of the U.S. government’s transportation budget, points out Ralph Buehler, the study’s lead author and chair of the urban affairs and planning program at Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs, in a released statement.
That’s not nearly enough to make a significant difference in helping people make walking and cycling part of their daily routine, he adds.
And we should be encouraging people to walk and cycle more. Plenty of research has shown that integrating active travel into our daily lives can help improve our physical and psychological health. It’s also a cheaper and more practical way than joining a gym or fitness center of meeting recommended levels of physical activity.
The new study, published online this week in the Journal of Transport and Health, was conducted to see whether the past two decades of research and government investments in active transportation has had any effect on how often and frequently Americans walk or cycle.
Study details
For the study, Buehler and his colleagues compared responses from the National Household Travel Survey from the years 2001 and 2017. About 200,000 Americans aged 5 to 65-plus took part in the two surveys. The questions included ones about the frequency, duration and distance the participants walked or cycled. (Parents provided answers for their young children.)
The researchers found a slight increase in the daily walking rates over the 16-year period of the study. The share of Americans who reported walking an average of 30 minutes a day, for example, increased from 7.2 percent to 7.9 percent. There was essentially no change, however, in the cycling rates. The percentage of Americans who said they averaged 30 minutes of cycling a day was 0.9 percent in both years, and the proportion who said they averaged at least 10 minutes a day fell from 1.5 percent in 2001 to 1.3 percent in 2017.
Walking increased the most among middle-aged adults aged 25 to 64, among people in both the highest and lowest household income quartiles, and among people without a car.
In fact, there was an inverse relationship between car ownership and walking. The more cars in a household, the less walking its residents did.
“It is not at all surprising that the small increase in walking was in dense, urban cities like Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., where measures have been taken to improve infrastructure and programs and policies have been adopted to make walking and cycling easier and safer,” says Buehler.
Other trends
The walking rates were roughly the same among men and women, but men were three times more likely to cycle.
“In general, women will only cycle if they think the entire ride will be safe,” says Buehler. “If they perceive that there will be any danger at all along the way they will resist.”
Cycling rates increased the fastest among highly educated, employed, high-income, white men between the ages 16 and 44. Here’s one statistic from the study that underscores that trend: In 2001, there was no difference in cycling rates between university graduates and people without a high school diploma. In 2017, cycling was roughly two times more common among college grads than among those who didn’t graduate from high school.
“Some of those increases may have resulted from higher-income groups moving to denser, mixed-use, inner-city neighborhoods with short trip distances,” the researchers write.
Yet, that doesn’t entirely explain the trend.
“Recent research has criticized American cities for providing better walking and cycling facilities in higher-income neighborhoods while often ignoring the needs of marginalized communities of low income and color,” the researchers explain. “Walking and cycling conditions in low-income neighborhoods are often dangerous, inconvenient, or stressful.”
“Equity should be an important aspect of transportation policy,” they stress.
Another troubling trend uncovered in the study is the significant decrease in walking and cycling rates among children and young teens aged 5 to 15. For example, 2.4 percent of young people cycled for an average of 30 minutes a day in 2001. Sixteen years later, that figure had fallen to 0.9 percent.
Sadly, these declines are not new. They’re a continuation of a trend that started back in the 1970s — one that has reduced “an important source of children’s regular physical activity and might be a contributor to rising childhood obesity rates in the United States,” Buehler and his co-authors point out.
New measures needed
The researchers say any new measures to increase active travel should focus on children, teens and older adults, whose rates of walking and cycling are either lower than average or on the decline.
“Many studies indicate that separate, protected cycling facilities and traffic-calmed neighborhood streets would help encourage more cycling among women, children, and seniors, as well as by vulnerable or risk-averse individuals,” they write. “Special efforts must also be made to ensure safe and convenient walking and cycling conditions for low-income and other disadvantaged communities, which have been inadequately served in many American cities.”
Such efforts would benefit not just individuals, but the broader society.
“Physical activity through walking and cycling has the potential of greatly improving the physical, mental, and social health of both men and women, all ages, and all income levels,” they add. “Unlike formal exercise programs, walking and cycling can be integrated into daily routines and are affordable for virtually everyone.”
FMI: You can read the study online in the March issue of the Journal of Transport and Health.
And once again, an article about walking and biking that makes NO mention of the hazards of doing either in a northern environment like the Twin Cities during our 4-6 months of ice and snow. Every article promoting these has pictures taken on a sunny day in July, it seems. I’d like to see a few that show the same participants in an ice blizzard in January, just to make it more realistic. Weigh the risk of a broken hip vs improved cardio benefits and decide which you prefer. I’ll keep driving, thank you!
So what about the 6-8 months where you can bike. Nobody said it’s a year-round requirement once you commit.
I used to think of that, particularly when with how residential roads are (not) plowed. Then I got a trike and that took care of that. I’ve now biked to work most of the winter so far (full disclosure: yes I’ll skip when it’s -8 out); you can even get enclosed e-trikes that come complete with heaters. I save about $60/week on gas alone.
This doesn’t surprise me, I’m not sure why anyone would expect a significant increase in cycling in the US to begin with.
We still have one of if the THE most auto-centric societies and transportation systems in the world, that hasn’t changed in any perceptible way.
The truth is that our cycling infrastructure nationwide isn’t as safe as it is in countries with higher cycling rates. I visit my sister in Duxury MA, south of Boston, and I’m amazed anyone is riding bicycles out there, there are no shoulders, no lanes, nothing.
My generation rode our bikes until we got our driver’s license, very few of us continued riding very much if at all after that. However, until we got our licenses our bikes were our primary mode of summer transport AND play. We had high rates of cycling among children and teenagers, but almost zero riding among adults. That’s almost reversed now, child and teenage riding has all but collapsed.
Why aren’t children and teenagers riding? Because of their parents. Parent’s simply don’t let their kids ride or encourage bicycles as any kind of unsupervised activity or transportation. I live a block away from the SLP Junior High and during the school years you’ll never see more than five or six bikes locked up outside the school. 100’s of students, 5 bikes. Why? Because parents think it’s too dangerous. The same parents that won’t let their kids ride to school routinely send their kids out to get concussions and broken bones in a variety of sports, but a lifetime habit of activity, exercise, and environmentally friendly transportation is off limits. We have SUV’s lined up for blocks, but 5 bikes in the bike racks.
Related to the safety issue is the helmet problem. IF parents let their kids ride bikes unsupervised, they are required to wear helmets. The efficacy of helmets is a discussion for a different day but one thing we know is that lifetime habits are best acquired early in life, and helmet requirements discourage riding and encourage a myth that cycling is dangerous.
I’m not telling anyone what to do with their kids, but cycling is an incredibly safe activity, and helmets do no prevent the vast majority of injuries (only 16% of cycling injuries involve heads), nor do they prevent head injuries ( of those injuries we have data for, 9% of helmet wearers suffer head injuries compared to 16% of non-helmet wearers).
Just to give you the raw numbers- it’s estimated that around 50 million Americans ride bicycles, of those 1% end up in emergency rooms every year (50k), and of THOSE only 10% (5k) are hospitalized or even kept over for observation. In other words 99.9% of those riding bikes will ride for a lifetime with or without a helmet and never suffer an injury.
I think we have a golden opportunity. We have a generation of young activists and climate activists on our doorstep who are looking for personal ways to reverse climate change; what would be more natural than encouraging these young people to help save the environment than by using bikes for transportation? Why not see 100 or 200 bikes locked up outside our schools? If we want more people to ride we have to encourage riding, and sustain that riding for lifetimes.
My apologies, I made a typo regarding my injury numbers, add a zero- it should read 500k and 50k not 50k and 5k. The percentages still work out.