Bike/Walk to Work Week Winners

I’ve been at a transportation conference in Baltimore all week and returned this morning to see an email from Angela Perry from Cornell Cooperative Extension, coordinator of our local Bike/Walk to Work Week initiative.

18 teams participated this year!

And the winners are:

Team lunches – Team CAPCO with 118 miles & Regs and Temps for the most days participated.

$75 gift certificates to Sarvay Shoes – Jennifer Skenian, Fran Casullo, & Lisa Mitchell.

$75 gift certificates to Action Sports – Bob Vidulich, Merwin Greene, & Rayne Perry.

(Prizes donated by Healthy Now and Way2Go Cortland)

Congratulations to the winners and all of the participants! We hope you will continue to bike and walk whenever you can throughout the year.

Jan

Why bicycling can be good for business

Today is the official National Bike to Work Day. This entire week Cortland has been participating in Bike/Walk to Work Week. So I hope on this beautiful day you are going to get out and do some walking or bicycling. There’s no excuse today. It’s a perfect day to be outside.

An interesting article that appeared several months ago on dc.streetsblog.org talks about how bicycling can actually be very good for business – especially local downtown businesses.

People who ride bicycles don’t normally ride out to the big box stores on the edge of town. Instead, they will head downtown where there are bike racks and where it is more manageable to shop and perhaps grab a bite to eat.

April Economides, a consultant who helped the city of Long Beach, California build bicycle friendly business districts says “Bicycling, just like walking, helps make a Main Street more vibrant. It adds more eyes and ears to the street, so it makes it safer. So think about a mom pushing a stroller. She’s going to want to walk down a block that has more people walking and bicycling; she’ll feel safer. And you do want to attract women and moms. We’re a pretty important shopping base.”

Another idea mentioned in the article which I have seen before and think would be a great idea for downtown Cortland in the summer is a ciclovia or “Open Street” event. Part of Main Street would be closed off to motorized traffic and only walkers, bicyclists, skateboarders, etc. would be allowed. A study of these types of events show that 73% of participants spent money at a store or restaurant on the route.

Lots to think about.

Jan

No eating while driving

First there was no drinking while driving. Then there was no talking on a cellphone while driving. Following that there was no texting while driving.

Now there’s no eating while driving. Uh-oh!

I bet that one surprises you. A new study out of the University of Leeds in the U.K. shows that eating while driving slows reaction time worse than driving drunk.

As reported on sympatico.ca,  ”Using a simulator, researchers found drivers’ response times slow about 44 percent while eating behind the wheel, often because the driver had only one hand free. Comparatively, driving with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 only worsened response times by 12.5 percent.”

True confessions here. I know I have done this and probably 100% of drivers have done this or are still doing this. But I have forsaken fast food so at least it’s not a Big Mac.

Jan

Making transit fun, even sexy

A great article on the Grist website, “A Low-Cost Way to Improve Public Transit: Add Joy” talks about what is needed to allow transit and other alternative transportation to compete with cars. And that is – we need to make it fun, even sexy.

How much money in advertising has been spent by the automobile industry  to make their cars appear sexy? We don’t do this with buses. The bus industry doesn’t have the money to do this.

But what could we do to make it more fun to ride a bus or a train? Some of the ideas mentioned in the article include a slide in Amsterdam (there’s a cute video), bus shelters that look like fruit in Japan, and “love seats” in Copenhagen.

Put on your thinking caps. What could we do here in Cortland to encourage public transit use, walking or bicycling?

Here are some of my ideas:
1. Wi-fi on the buses
2. New designs for the buses (we are working on this)
3. Bus shelters that look like apples – you know, Cortland apple (a tomato shelter is pictured in the article)
4. Lots of cool looking benches in the downtown area

Would love to hear your ideas. Feel free to post your comments.

Jan

So few kids walk or bike to school

In the 1960s 50 percent of kids walked to school. Now it’s about 13 percent, according to an article in Transportation Nation.

In the 1960s, kids spent their free time outside, riding bikes, playing with their friends, exploring their neighborhoods. Now they sit in front of the TV, the computer, or their cell phone.

In the 1960s overweight kids were rare. Now we have Type 2 diabetes in kids, and obese children as young as 2 years old has become a national problem.

It’s not a simple problem to address. There are many reasons for the growing obesity problem in this country, among adults as well as children.

But one thing we do know is that lack of exercise is a main factor.

There’s no need for an expensive gym membership. Just get outside and walk. Walk to school, walk to work, walk on your lunch hour, walk after work, walk after dinner. If you can bike safely, then that’s another way of getting to where you need to go and getting some exercise at the same time. If safety is a concern for parents, start a walking school bus.

Jan

 

Long commutes are unhealthy

A new study adds to previous research and confirms that the longer your commute the greater the  likelihood that your health will be affected in a negative way.

The average commute is about 15 miles each way. Two-thirds of all commuters travel 15 miles or less to work. But 11 percent travel more than 30 miles each way.

I was in that latter category for 20 years. That extra sitting each day, added to a job sitting in front of a computer, was not good for my health. But was it the extra sitting that was bad or were there other factors such as the stress of driving and bad weather?

As Nate Berg wrote in The Atlantic Cities there is still room for research on this issue. “The authors note that future studies would be needed to fully understand whether and how sedentary time during commuting affects health. For example, how is sitting in a car for an hour on your way to work different from sitting in your chair for an hour when you’re at work? Or sitting on your couch? Or, instead of sitting in a driver’s seat, sitting in a bus seat?”

All I know is that we need to move around to be healthy and you can’t do that when you’re stuck driving a car. If you have a sedentary job a long commute is going to compound the negative effects.

Jan

 

Bike/Walk to Work Week

Just a reminder that today is the last day to register for next week’s Bike/Walk to Work Week sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension, Healthy Now and Way2Go Cortland.

Get a team of up to 5 people together, register, and then keep track of your biking/walking during that week.

There will be individual prizes and team prizes.

Download a registration form or pick one up at Cornell Cooperative Extension, Cortland County Office Building, Room 105; Sarvay Shoes and Action Sports on Main Street, Cortland or the Cortland Free Library, 32 Church Street, Cortland.

More information.

You can do it!

Jan

Walking school bus

It’s quite simple. Organize a walking school bus and your kids can get some exercise, connect with their neighborhoods and be safe.

It’s a group of kids with one or more adults walking to school. It’s like a carpool without the car.

Start small – maybe two or three neighborhood families coordinating their schedules so a parent can walk the group 1 day a week.

A simple idea whose time came and went  and now needs to come again.

Jan

Don’t drive your kids everywhere

Children need to connect with their neighborhoods and communities and that doesn’t happen when they are driven everywhere.

I think we all can relate to this. If you’re a passenger you just don’t pay attention as much to where you’re going and may not be able to drive it yourself if you had to.

But an article in The Atlantic Cities cites a study that also found that kids who are in and around cars all the time are negatively affected. In neighborhoods where there is heavy traffic exposure the children “expressed feelings of dislike and danger and were unable to represent any detail of the surrounding environment.”

“Participants from the Light [traffic exposure] neighborhood, on the other hand, showed a much richer sense of their environment, drawing more of the streets, houses, trees, and other objects, and including fewer signs of danger, or dislike and fewer cars. The children also drew many more places in the street where they liked to play and areas that they just simply liked.”

Did you know that only 18% of children currently walk or bike to school? 71% of their parents did.

The study also showed that where there were improvements to pedestrian and bike infrastructure, children became happier with their environment.

Tomorrow I’ll post an article about the Walking School Bus.

Jan

Walking with the Mayor

We had 7 people walking with the Mayor yesterday. Not a bad start for the walking series. It was a beautiful morning! Next week the walk will start at 10 am at Yaman Park. Meet at the Pavilion at Yaman Park. Hope you can join us. We can cheer on all those who are participating in the Mother’s Day 5K at Yaman.

Jan