Transportation and Public Health

YIPES...i got like 20 emails this week about BEPH-like topics.

One to put on your calendar: December 16, 12:00 - 3:00 p.m. CST is a webcast of a panel discussing "Transportation and Public Health: The State of the Science." including panelists from FHWA, the Centers forDisease Control, and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. This panel is co-sponsored by FHWA and Institute of Transportation and the Environment at NC State University. To get a link ot the webcast go to www.itre.ncsu.edu/cte

Now on to the documents:


"THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH: 11 Profiles of Neighborhood Transformation"
http://www.preventioninstitute.org/pdf/BE_full_document_110304.pdf

This document discusses 11 low-income communities where local residents mobilized public
and private resources to change the physical environment in the neighborhoods to improve the health and QOL. The document is supposed to help communities and citizen groups model their efforts on these sucesses. yuppp.

WALKING SECURITY INDEX - IMPLEMENTABLE!!!
http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~wellarb/walking_security_index_pilot_stu.htm
City of Ottawa Walking Security Index Project...yup...so they found that (suprise!) Intersection Volume and Design Index (like humongo cowabunga widening at crossing for more lanes going across intersection, etc.) , Quality of Intersection Condition Index, and Driver Behaviour Index were all importance factors. Not only that but (YAY) all the data is available in order to easily assess the walking security of intersections so they have no excuse not to IMPLEMENT IT...WOOHOOO!

So yay, maybe more cities will adopt this index and can actually implement it into policy - eek! yowzers! So now in addition to saying an intersection can't have a Level of Service (LOS) of less than D, we can also say that the "walking security index" must be X. So next step: laws that say what X is for what projects. After that: the world!


Okay, more later...