Improved Billboard?

I don't endorse graffiti, but give credit for creativity.

Americans Walk Far Less Than Those in Other Countries

It should really come as no surprise that Americans walk far less than their counterparts in other countries, and now we have scientific data to support that claim. From the Reuters news account:

Adults in western Australia average 9,695 steps a day. The Swiss followed with 9,650, while the Japanese clocked in with 7,168 steps. But Americans straggled far behind with just 5,117 steps.

 "We were surprised that the levels of physical activity were that low," said Dr. David R. Bassett, of the University of Tennessee, the lead author of the study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

"Five thousand steps is really pretty inactive," he added.

And while we may need to hit the gym more, the author suggests that the main culprit has to do with the lack of walking in our day-to-day environment.

Bassett thinks America's car culture and lack of adequate public transportation provide fertile ground for couch potatoes.

"People do have to exercise," he said. "But our overall environment does not lend itself to promoting an active lifestyle."

Indeed, there is a clear link between biking or walking to work, and positive health outcomes.

We can also see that cities that invest in rail transit tend to have an increase in walking. As Infrastucturist nicely summarizes:

• All cities experienced a slight increase in commuter walking, at 1.8 percent
• Cities without rail had a 2.7 percent decrease
• Cities with rail but no major new rail investments saw a 1.7 percent increase
• Cities with major new rail investments jumped 4.2 percent

 Just something to think about as our health care costs continue to skyrocket.

Forbes Thinks KC is Dangerous Because it Drives Too Much?

Forbes comes out with a lot of lists as a way of bringing attention to its publication in the wake of sagging revenues. Their most recent list is the Most Dangerous Cities in America, and to the ire of the local chamber of commerce, Kansas City ranks high on the list at number three.

Of course, it comes with this caveat.

“There are zones in safe cities that are way off the chart for crime rates, but when you average it across all of the city, it doesn’t look so bad,” says Bruce McIndoe, president of Maryland-Based iJet Intelligent Risk Systems, a risk-assessment firm.

 Which is of course true. If you live in Brookside, I'd say you're probably as safe as if you lived in Plano, Texas (the safest city in America!). In fact, if you lived in the great majority of Kansas City, you're generally safe. Crime, particularly violent crime, is very concentrated in this area. Six percent of the population in the zip code 64130 make up 20 percent of the murders and voluntary manslaughters in the city.

Another interesting point raised by a professor of mine relates to the factors they used.

We used FBI data on the number of violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2009, and Department of Transportation data on the number of traffic fatalities per 100,000 residents in 2008 (the most recent available).

Notice anything about the list? They all tend to be car-centric metro areas. Sure Atlanta, St. Louis and Miami have light rail systems, but they are all still heavily dependent on automobiles. 

It is interesting that Forbes is telling us that what makes a city dangerous is not only the criminals that inhabit a city, but the careless drivers that populate a city, and I applaud them for including that as a criteria. Being a safer city is not just about reducing crime, its about reducing traffic fatalities as well.

Any new light rail campaign should make this part of the campaign - Make Kansas City Safer. Take these careless drivers off the road. Get fewer people driving.

New Documentary About Commuter Rail Line in Overland Park

Commuter rail in Overland Park? Unthinkable! Well there used to be a well functioning commuter rail line called the Strang Line, running from 7th and Oak, through Westport, and on down to 80th and Santa Fe. The line stopped running in 1940, but there are still remnants of the line around Johnson County.

There is a new documentary about the history of the rail showing at the Rio Theater, with plans for KCPT to run the program in the future.

Its interesting that Overland Park was made possibly in large part because of commuter rail. As its suburbs, particularly inner-ring suburbs, became more working class, it will be interesting if commuter rail becomes once again a necessary lifeline to connect workers to jobs, or if it will continue to require its working population to invest in automobiles as a cost of living there. 

International Walk to School Day

Today is International Walk to School Day, and over five thousand schools across the country will participate in an effort to promote safer walking routes and more physical activity for children.

What should also be promoted however, is the fact that many of the areas around our schools are simply not safe. Simply putting up signs that warn of "Children Crossing, Slow Down" is not enough to slow down traffic and make an area safe for children to cross. A child was struck in Olathe this week, the third child struck by an automobile near a school this fall.

Cities and schools should be looking at better ways to slow down and reduce traffic around school buildings. Suburban schools tend to be located in exclusively residential areas. Cities should discourage the use of streets leading into schools to be used as main arterials. This may mean road diets (street thinning), reduced speed zones (all the time, not just during school hours), roundabouts, and stop signs. Instead of maximizing speed and efficiency on all roads, cities should begin thinking about moving traffic into certain corridors, while actually slowing down and reducing traffic in other areas where pedestrian traffic is likely.

Is High Density Required for Transit in KC?

Human Transit has an interesting post on the relationship between density and transit and pokes holes in some of the fallacies.

Transit does depend on density, but there are three problems with saying that “transit requires high density.”  

    * First, it offers no hope to places that are already built at low densities and unlikely to change.
    * Second, it gives public transit in low-density areas an excuse for descending into a cycle of underinvestment, official neglect, and lazy operations, because after all, nobody expects public transit in low density areas to be any good anyway. 
    * Third, it invites sweeping claims about transit’s viability based on the overall average density of a city, claims that, as we’ll see, make no sense at all.

Of course, we hear this argument all the time when transit is raised here in Kansas City. Transit can be a way to build up density. But since we already have low density, transit won't work here.

I think this is an astute point as well:

The emotions are inevitable: Whenever we talk about urban form, people hear us making judgments about their homes.  I can stand in front of a group of citizens and talk about how a certain kind of development pattern implies certain consequences for transit, and thus for sustainability, and thus for civilization.  As we talk, it may appear that we’re having a thoughtful and educational discussion about good and bad design.  But some people in the audience have chosen to make their homes in the very development pattern that I’m describing, and to those people, I’m saying that their home is good or bad.

If you talk about say a RCP light rail plan and the need for higher density, you will get resistance from Northlanders...even suburbanites for whom the the rail will not even affect. Some of that I'm sure is anti-tax sentiments, but I don't think we should overlook the defensiveness of suburbanites. No one likes being told they are making bad choices, particularly about big things like the choice of where and how to live. Implicit in the arguments for density and transit is a critique of suburban sprawl.

KCPT ran a program last year called "The Next American Dream" about the revitalization of downtown. They advocated for even greater density and urbanization of the metro area. But they were also smart not to criticize suburbanization. They emphasized greater "choice" - urban living for some, suburban living for others. This will be key for any discussion on light rail or higher density plans.

The last point I think is key:

Transit reacts mainly with the density right around its stations.  It is in the nature of transit to serve an area very unevenly, providing a concentrated value around its stops and stations and less value elsewhere.  So what matters for transit is the density right where the transit is, not the aggregate density of the whole urban area.

 What matters not is the density of the Kansas City metro area, or Kansas City proper, or even the imaginary boundaries of the River Market/Crown Center/Plaza corridor. What matters is the density around the transit nodes we select. If you put transit stops at the River Market, in the Financial District, at the Convention Center/Power and Light District/Sprint Center, at the Crossroads, at Crown Center/Union Station, at Westport at the Plaza, at Brookside/UMKC - will there be sufficient densities around those nodes?

League of American Bicyclists Recognizes Bike-Friendly Companies

The League of American Bicyclists has honored those Kansas City area businesses and organizations that are the most bike-friendly.

Fall 2010 Kansas City Area Bicycle Friendly Businesses
Silver Level

• 360° Architecture
• Family Bicycles, LLC    

Bronze Level

• Foth Infrastructure and Environment — Kansas City       

Honorable Mention

• City of Mission, Kan.
• City of Shawnee, Kan.
• Mid-America Regional Council 
• Sprint Nextel
• UMB Financial Corporation