Public Health

A fact sheet [PDF] released by the city's health department today makes the case that New York City's walkability contributes to the health of residents -- but a deeper look into the research shows that not all New Yorkers are benefitting equally from walkable neighborhoods.

A lot of research has shown a link between living in a walkable community, active transportation habits, and better health outcomes.

Traffic fatality numbers usually get the headlines, but as a measure of how safe or dangerous it is to walk and bike, injuries are the more stable metric. Since 2003, according to state DMV data, an average of just under 14,000 people were injured by motorists while walking and biking in the city each year.

When cars first became a common presence in American cities, doctors were shocked by the carnage. In 1925, editors of the New England Journal of Medicine called the bloodshed caused by motorists "appalling" and lamented children's loss of life as "a massacre of the innocent." The sense of urgency was still detectable a few decades later. In a 1957 report, Harvard researchers called the public health threat posed by automobiles a “mass disease of epidemic proportions.”

I got to know Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett last year, when I interviewed him at the annual meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors. We talked about his realization that he and his constituents (generally speaking) were obese, and how he stood in front of the elephants at the zoo on New Year's Eve six years ago and announced that the city was going on a diet. He set out to have the residents of Oklahoma City lose a million pounds -- and the city achieved it.

Here is more from last week's pedestrian injury summit at Elmhurst Hospital.

Medical professionals and transportation experts convened Thursday for the third New York City Summit on Pedestrian Injury, hosted by Elmhurst Hospital. The day-long event brought transportation officials and advocates together with doctors who witness the destruction caused by reckless drivers in the city every day.

Just when you thought it was safe to breathe, a pair of studies underscore the grave threat that air pollution poses to public health.

This is an excerpt from "Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy," by Elly Blue (Microcosm Publishing, December 1, 2013, bikenomics.com). See our interview with Elly from spring 2013.