A little light reading: Transportation and health, Summer Parkways, and the density of smart people

How do we pay for our transportation system? Surprise: In our health care system. At least in part, that is.

Choices to drive rather than walk to the transit stop or ride a bike are choices in favor of a sedentary life. When you say yes to the car you say no to moving yourself with personal power and burning a few calories.

Cost shifts are also hidden in food prices thanks to agricultural subsidies for low-quality calories (think high-fructose corn syrup). Cheap bell peppers grown in Chile and shipped to Spokane undercut locally grown produce that doesn’t travel nearly as far. Soda costs less than fruit juice, which at least has some element of real food in it. Ever stop to wonder how that happens?

As Tufts University nutrition researcher Christina Economos said at a recent conference on childhood obesity at WSU Spokane, “We should subsidize the foods we want people to eat.”

This week’s fodder:

• Grist magazine on the American Public Health Association report assessing the hidden health costs of transportation
• A statement from the Centers for Disease Control on transportation policy
• The recently announced move by DOT/EPA/HUD to work together on funding criteria for sustainable communities--a step in the right direction. Let’s call on our elected officials and agency heads to expand this effort to include the Department of Education (Safe Routes to School and local food sources for school nutrition programs, for example)
• Grist on food prices and why Whole Foods shoppers are thinner than shoppers at your average neighborhood grocery store (yes, income explains some of it—but not all)
• Local Year of Plenty blogger and biking pastor Craig Goodwin on the food pyramid and federal agricultural subsidies (source of the image above)
• Planetizen blogger Steven Polzin on The Cost of Slow Travel: Boy, did I ever have to comment on this one.

Next American City panned the idea of “summer streets” efforts that don’t get people to think much, much differently about street design. What’s wrong with plain old fun, I ask? Our Spokane Summer Parkways will be plenty of fun, thank you very much.

The Density of Smart People: Back in my teenage days Dad used to say, shaking his head gently at me, “For someone who’s supposed to be so smart, you sure don’t have much horse sense.”

That isn’t what the Creative Class folks mean by density—they’re looking at how many smart people (college-educated) per square mile cities have as a measure of their human capital.

Their piece is based on the original analysis by Rob Pitingolo, which turned out to have comments by people asking whether walkability scores and income-based mobility played any role in where smart people choose to live. Maybe everything is ultimately about transportation….

A little light reading: Lots on transit & transportation, a bit on cities, and a side of grammar

I like this idea so much I’m stealing it shamelessly (highest form of praise, right?) from Human Transit blogger Jarrett Walker. He runs a “weekend reading” post with links to other blog posts he finds interesting or insightful. Since I do most of my blog reading on weekends it works better for me to make this your Monday reading assignment for the week.

Why transit and transportation when this is BiketoWork Barb’s hangout? I read a fair amount on transportation and urban planning because:

• It informs my work representing my campus as we engage in development of Spokane’s University District.
• It interests me as someone who loves our downtown, neighborhoods, open green spaces and nearby farms and wants to see all of them thrive and maintain their distinctive qualities.
• It fascinates me as a student of public policy that we so often fail to recognize the ways that policy has shaped our current landscape and yet people fight the idea of using policy to shape it further. (Think that trying to plan and encourage shifts in people’s transportation choices involves “social engineering"? Well, what formed the habits they have right now? That’s right—social engineering.)
• My mental shift to full-time bike commuter took me out of full-time driver mode. When it’s too icy or seriously windy and I don’t bike, my first instinct is not to reach for the car keys—it’s to head for the bus stop four blocks from my house. When I compare the three modes, bike or bus beat car for me most of the time.
• More recently, as a result of my interest and engagement in active transportation in our community I was appointed to the Transportation Advisory Committee of the Spokane Regional Transportation Council, then appointed by the SRTC Board to serve as chair of the committee. My responsibility there is not to be BiketoWork Barb—it’s to bring an understanding shaped by bike and transit commuting as well as years of driving (and years of buying and using stuff brought here by rail and truck freight—ever stop to think of that as part of your personal transportation system?) to think about all modes of transportation.

With that really extended intro, here’s some of what I read (and commented on) recently:

• Engineer Scotty’s Dead Horse Times (don't flog a....) on transit planning and hierarchy of needs: The first post in this related set of three.
• Human Transit responding to Engineer Scotty on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and transit planning.
• Cap’n Transit Rides Again refining Engineer Scotty’s list of factors (“needs”). Comments on all three of these blogs are well-informed and extend the discussion—exactly what you hope for as a blogger.
• The Urbanophile on a recent speech by Federal Transit Authority chief Peter Rogoff. I’m quite glad to say that Spokane Transit is much better run than the systems cited here, which is why I was happy to be part of their recent ad campaign (some of it viewable on the Spokane Transit Facebook page).
• More on that same FTA speech by Human Transit. (Can you tell I totally got sucked into following links to discussions playing out over several blogs? That’s the Web for you.)
• Human Transit wrote about the choices we make about our commute when we choose where to live. Transportation for America launched the site My Commute Sucks where you can register your complaints. Since my commute doesn’t suck I was glad to see they also have a section where you can talk about what you like about your commute.
• A piece in The New Republic on the “livability moment” that calls on us to stress policy outcomes over individual transportation delivery modes.
• Ped Shed on intersection density and what it means for walkability.

Cities and Economic Development

• Urbanophile again on creative destruction and what it will take to be relevant as a city hoping to attract and keep economic vitality. He writes about the Midwest but it applies to us too.
• What’s So Urban About Agriculture? on the Sustainable Cities blog. This one caught my eye because I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by my beloved Barbara Kingsolver (Amazon link to buy or you can just go to Auntie's if you're in Spokane or your public library) and I’m more committed than ever to supporting local agriculture with my food dollars. This post is more about Dar es Salaam than anything in the US but the principles apply.

English Grammar

I majored in English and Linguistics and love word play and thinking about words. My future-English-teacher Second Daughter asked about the use of the conditional tense (“If I weren’t so cute, I would never get anywhere in life”).

• That led me to this page with a nice explanation of the conditional tense.
• There’s also the grammar tips site maintained by @GrammarGirl.
• No list of grammar/usage sites would be complete without WSU’s own Paul Brians’ page on common English usage errors (the most popular page on the site, I’ve heard).

That should keep you busy for a while.