Carless in Chicago » Policy & Research

More on Active Transit and Obesity

Jason — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:05:52 +0000

I’m not the best poster child for the calorie burning benefits of giving up car ownership since I tend to use my more active lifestyle as justification for eating more ice cream. But in my real job working in public health, a lot of my projects concern the relationship between active transportation choices and obesity prevention. I’ve recently run into a couple of items illustrating the connections between transit and health:

An excellent graphic (sadly non-embeddable) illustrating the typical transit mix in states matched against obesity rates in those states.

A Freakonomics post referencing some of that same data, and connecting it to a recent study from North Carolina showing lower obesity rates among streetcar users (blogged about previously).

A new study from the American Public Transportation Association (PDF) exploring the links between transit and longer, healthier lifespans. (Via the always excellent Bobulate.)

Economics of Parking

Jason — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:30:42 +0000

In the book, I briefly mention Donald Schoup’s excellent book, The High Price of Free Parking, but I don’t go into great detail about how changing the way we price parking might improve our quality of life. As it happens, a couple weeks ago, economist Tyler Cowen wrote a great Op-Ed about this very topic, which also led to some interesting follow-up debate. One advantage of being a slightly lazy blogger is that I can list all of these discussions together in a comprehensive post.

Free Parking Comes at a Price by Tyler Cowen.

Arnold Kling responds, and Cowen responds back.

Robin Hanson responds to both, and Kling replies.

On a roll, Cowen also provides a little more ‘color commentary’ here and here.

Of course, here in Chicago we’re living through the great parking meter privatization experiment. Aaron Renn (the Urbanophile) provides some excellent commentary, focusing largely on how Chicago’s parking meter deal locks the city into a pretty inflexible model for parking policy.

For the moment, I’ll spare readers my own entirely correct but quite unpopular opinions about what Chicago should be doing differently parking-wise.

Chicago B-Cycle Launches (Note: potentially unfair and premature judgement enclosed)

Jason — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:48:35 +0000

Last weekend I was in Minneapolis for a wedding, and was blown away by the new Nice Ride bike sharing program. I was particularly impressed with the ubiquity of the program: I saw bikes downtown, in Uptown, in Longfellow, and in several other neighborhoods. I was all set to write a post about it when I got home, but then heard about the imminent launch of Chicago B-Cycle, Chicago’s first bike sharing program. I decided to wait until the details came out and see how the approaches differed.

Both programs share the same basic model: Users buy a subscription entitling them to check bikes out from any automated kiosk and return them to any other automated kiosk. Both subscriptions entitle riders to an unlimited number of free short term rides (up to one hour for Chicago B-Cycle and up to half an hour for Nice Ride) and then charge additional fees based on total ride time. (Chicago B-Cycle also offers a no-subscription hourly rate, but at a pretty hefty premium.) Both pricing models encourage shorter rides (and thus keeping lots of bikes circulating), although Nice Ride is a bit more aggressive in this regard.

I don’t want to be unfair, but a couple of things stand out looking at these two programs. First, Nice Ride is all over Minneapolis. As of now, B-Cycle is concentrated downtown and around North Michigan (with one additional kiosk at McCormick Place). This, combined with the high one-time rates, seems targeted more to tourists than commuters. I’m surprised that they didn’t choose at least a couple of residential neighborhoods to include in the initial launch. (In comparison, Nice Ride launched this spring and now has 65 stations with lots of planned expansion.)

Chicago B-Cycle is also just a lot more expensive overall. Nice Ride offers 24-hour subscriptions starting at $5, and a year for $60. Chicago B-Cycle’s subscriptions start at $35 for 30 days, and max out at $55 for 90 days, for an equivalent yearly cost of $220.

To be fair: Nice Ride is a few months old now, and also a non-profit operation that gets a hefty chunk of money from government grants and in particular, tobacco settlement money managed by Blue Cross Blue Shield. Chicago B-Cycle operates on a for-profit model, and has to fully cover their operating expenses through subscriptions, fees, and sponsorships. I’m not privy to their expansion plans, but I hope they thrive and move into other parts of the city quickly (and hopefully, reduce cost through efficiencies).

But I have to wonder about the viability of the for-profit model on something like this if its really intended to become part of our transportation infrastructure (which seems to be the goal underlying Nice Ride). As a country, state, and city, we subsidize mass transit (although not enough). And we spend vast amounts of public money subsidizing driving, through roads, through tax breaks to oil companies, through lots of free and inexpensive parking, and other mechanisms. And we’re right to do so (yes, even with some of our subsidization of driving, although I’d like to see it reduced); our transit infrastructure is a major economic driver. So if we really want bikes to become a viable, essential part of our city’s transit system, shouldn’t we be looking at subsidized models for those initiatives also?

Chicago B-Cycle is a nice addition to the city, and I’m excited to try it out. But even as someone who ought to be smack dab in the middle of their target demographic, I have a hard time imagining doing so for any reason other than the novelty.

I’d be very curious to hear other people’s opinions about this. Please leave your thoughts in comments.

The public health case for less traffic

Jason — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:46:12 +0000

As most readers of the book and this blog know, I work in public health, and while the intersection of public health and going carless isn’t a big theme in the book, it’s a big interest of mine. On his blog (which I don’t visit often enough), Ken Archer rightly chides the CDC for only emphasizing traffic safety as a way to reduce road fatalities, and not encouraging reductions in traffic itself. This omission seems particularly odd given that embracing active transportation lies at the heart of many of CDC’s obesity prevention initiatives.

In case you didn’t know, auto accidents are the number 1 cause of death among 1-34 year olds. Here in Illinois, about three people die on the roads every day, with approximately eleven traffic-related injuries occurring every hour. I’m all in favor of seat belts and airbags, and all the traffic calming we can muster. But choosing to go places on foot, by bike, or on mass transit is often the safest decision you can make.

(Via Yglesias.)

Public Transit, Personal Health

Jason — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:42:15 +0000

I talk quite a bit in the book about the relationship between transportation choices and our personal health, although as someone who often takes the train to beloved Chicago food destinations, I’m not always the best person to make the case. But this week, the New York Times reports on a study of the light rail system in Charlotte, NC demonstrating a pretty clear link between weight loss and choosing public transit over cars. (Not that this is a new finding in general, but this is the most recent example.)

Medium Speed Rail

Jason — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:54:37 +0000

I am unashamed of my desire to see new high speed rail links brought to the Chicago region and elsewhere. But recently, two commentators have reminded us that as exciting as HSR projects would be, they may not really represent our most pressing transit needs.

Just today, John McCarron pens a Tribune Op-Ed arguing that putting stimulus dollars into what he refers to as “medium speed rail” like the El and Metra systems would benefit a lot of people a lot more quickly that many of the projects that congress is currently evaluating.

Writing a little more broadly, Ben Adler of The Nation points out that most of the public transit dollars in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act go to new projects, rather than providing much needed operating support to local agencies.

I think anyone who’s lived through the numerous “doomsday” scenarios of the past few years would have hard time arguing with these points. I’d speculate that we’re likely to see another stimulus bill in some shape or form in the next twelve months. If you’re inclined to do so, consider writing your representatives to let them know your priorities as a carless citizen.

Gas Prices and Obesity

Jason — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:09:12 +0000

Every couple of days recently I’ve run across an article about Christopher Steiner’s new book, $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better. One of the more interesting ones is a recent piece in Forbes by Steiner himself exploring the relationship between gas prices and Americans’ weight, suggesting that a $1 rise in price of gas translates into a 10% dip in obesity, and an $11 billion annual annual savings in health care costs. Food for thought, as they say…

How Much Does Your Driving Cost Everyone Else?

Jason — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:19:57 +0000

In the book, I write quite a bit about the true costs of owning and operating a car, and offer tools and tips for figuring out just how much money you may be spending on your big metal dependent every year. But there’s a whole other side to this that I barely touch on in the book: what driving a car costs everyone else in what economists call “externalities.” For example, how much time do other drivers lose collectively by the addition of one more car into traffic, and what is the collective value of that time?

As you might imagine, this is a pretty complicated question to answer, but recently Charles Komanoff, a transit policy analyst based in New York, unveiled his analysis of what each car added to Manhattan traffic costs in externalities. His finding? About $160 per car per day.

Felix Salmon has a relatively easy-to-understand write up of this analysis based on his discussions with Komaroff, and of course, Yglesias weighs in too. I imagine Komanoff’s spreadsheet (.xls) is a bit too complicated for me to fully digest, but I’m going to take a look to see if I can get a sense of how difficult it would be to adapt his analysis to another city like Chicago.

Informative and Entertaining Transit Advocacy

Jason — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:34:20 +0000

This is actually New York-related, but I thought this short animation from StreetFilms was a particularly well made piece of transit advocacy.

(Via Freakonomics.)
(Updated to embed YouTube version instead of original Flash movie.)

Bicycle Density = Bicycle Safety

Jason — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:21:54 +0000

After posting Matt Yglesias’s observations on mass transit safety yesterday, I had a vague recollection he wrote something along similar lines about bicycles a couple weeks ago. It turns out, I was remembering him linking to an interesting post on Streetsblog, highlighting data from NYC that as the number of bicycle riders goes up in the city, the average number of bicycle accidents goes down.

NYC Bicycle Ridership & Casualties

It turns out that the feeling of greater safety you probably experience when you see another cyclist on the road isn’t an illusion. It’s part of the Safety in Numbers Effect, identified by public health consultant Peter Jacobsen. The reasons for the effect are a bit unclear, but many safety experts speculate that the explanation is pretty simple: The more bikes on the road, the more aware motorists become of the cyclists around them.

So when you pick your bike, you’re not just helping yourself, you’re helping the other cyclists you encounter on the streets too.