Active Living
Active living integrates physical activity into daily routines. walking, riding a bicycle and using other forms of human-powered transportation to important places such as work, school, grocery stores, or doctor’s offices can improve health outcomes and improve overall wellness. Active living incorporates physical activity into our daily lives and displays what Active Transportation looks like when not using a car.
Walking and biking are two of the best active ways to accomplish short trips. Mass transit provides an economically reasonable alternative to using our personal cars to accomplish trips where walking or biking would not be suitable, or feasible. Using our cars becomes less important for short trips and we can help reduce our carbon footprint by leaving automobiles parked at home.
Physical Activity is a Key Component of Active Living
Frequent physical activity is one of the most important things you can do to improve your health. Moving more and sitting less have tremendous benefits for everyone, regardless of age, sex, race, ethnicity, or current fitness level. See the physical activity guidelines for your age group developed by the Department of Health and Human Services Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition to see how you may begin your active living lifestyle!
Activity-Friendly Routes to Everyday Destinations
From the CDC physical Activity website: Activity-friendly routes to everyday destinations is a strategy that improves the design of communities by connecting routes such as sidewalks, trails, bicycle lanes, and public transit to destinations such as grocery stores, schools, worksites, libraries, parks, or health care facilities. This strategy makes it safe and easy to walk, bicycle, or wheelchair roll for people of all ages and abilities. States, local governments, and community organizations use the following approaches to carry out this strategy:
Complete Streets Ordinance policies.
The first 2012 effort and second 2016 effort of introducing a Compete Street Policy/Ordinance were unsuccessful. ETC's work to initiate another Complete Street ordinance discussion in 2020 and 2021 has paid off. In early 2021, Evansville City Council Members, Ben Trockman and Zac Heronemus partnered with ETC to campaign toward another attempt and embraced the effort with us. Members Herenomus, Trockman, Burton, Moore, Beane, and Weaver filed the Evansville Complete Street Ordinance G-2021-17, Monday, October 5, introduced it, Monday, October 11, and will be voting, Monday, October 25, 2021.
Why It Is Important
A Complete Streets approach requires all types of users, ages, races, genders, incomes, abilities, and disabilities to be considered in the planning, design, operation, and maintenance of transportation networks. Having a complete street ordinance in place provides future equitable access and connects people to places and opportunities. This is inclusive in nature and serves all users and modes of transportation such as automobiles, transit, commercial drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, individuals, families, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
Adopting a complete streets ordinance in Evansville makes sense since Evansville has practiced general complete street policy improvements. Through partnership and collaboration, our city offices have made many improvements comprising of sidewalks, shared-use paths (multi-use trails), and bicycle lanes. Collectively, we have made strides by attaining small, incremental complete street improvements in the past several years and these improvements support all users and multimodal transportation. The feasibility of each improvement is at the discretion of the municipal offices responsible for the project and has the capacity to improve our current infrastructure by making inclusive and equitable decisions.
Franklin Street Bike Lane at First Avenue
How It Is Applied
Complete Streets OrdinancebPolicy may apply to roadway construction, repair, and even routine maintenance (such as paving and painting), reconstruction, and collectively assist us with providing mobility options to community members. A complete street improvement does not always equal total reconstruction; however, improvements are often made by reorganizing a street and using paint to designate areas (see example to the right).
Several of Evansville’s latest projects include various complete street elements, making places safe, convenient, and easy to navigate. In the state of Indiana, eighteen (18) cities have adopted a complete streets policy, which includes, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Lafayette, South Bend, Bloomington, Kokomo, Westfield, La Porte, Vincennes, Logansport, Frankfort, Bedford, Peru, Plymouth, Union City, Culver, Lacrosse, and Columbus. As the third-largest city in Indiana, Evansville should be included in this list.
Wonderful projects have been completed without having a complete streets ordinance in place. Some examples of complete streets projects are: Third and Vine Streets in front of the Post House, Walnut Street, Virginia Street, Lincoln Avenue, Oak Hill Road, North Main Street, Weinbach Avenue, Covert Avenue.
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Comprehensive or master plans.
A comprehensive plan also called the general plan or community master plan is the official statement of a local government establishing policies for its long-term development. These documents can be created through a collaboration between citizens, planners, and city leaders to include policies that guide investments to improve residents’ health outcomes by increasing physical activity opportunities.
Zoning policies.
Zoning policies influence the design of communities and the location of different land use types, such as commercial and residential development. This can influence distances between the two and in turn the feasibility for active travel. Policies outlined in comprehensive or master plans often guide zoning codes and other land development regulations.
Safe Routes.
Safe Routes is a comprehensive approach to improve safety and security for everyone walking, bicycling, and wheelchair rolling. Safe Routes approaches such as Safe Routes to School and Safe Routes to Parks include infrastructure improvements for better traffic laws, safety education, and incentives to encourage walking and bicycling to community destinations.
Active Transportation
What is Active Transportation? In a general sense, it is any activity we do to accomplish a task that eliminates or reduces the use of our personal vehicles. For example, walking to a neighborhood store to pick up a few items or riding our bike to work. For some of us it might include skateboarding, or rollerblading somewhere to meet friends. Some people may not own a car and utilize our transit system—this also serves as Active Transportation, since an individual either walks, or rides a bicycle to and from a bus stop. Our Evansville Mets buses are fitting with front bicycle racks, so individuals can ride to a bus stop and take their bikes with them. Active Transportation serves us in many ways—as exercise to improve health, saves us money by not purchasing fuel, and can take us to our mass transit systems, reduces vehicle congestion and helps reduce our carbon footprint.
We all want to feel better and be more active and Active Transportation serves to be an important alternative to us and our families. As our population grows and more infrastructure is built, it is important that we help shape that design to include walkable and bikeable streets, green space (natural areas) and provides services within active transportation distances. Our personal health, the health of others, as well as the health of our planet, count on all of us to help shape the future by advocating for multi-modal transportation systems that support Active Transportation to be an integral part of who we become.
The links below feature additional articles that help further explain Active Transportation:
https://www.railstotrails.org/partnership-for-active-transportation/why/
https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/active-transportation
https://www.in.gov/indot/3963.htm
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-7024-6
https://livewellaz.org/tag/transportation/
https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/active-transportation
http://plan4health.us/active-transportation/
Our Built Environment and Equity
Our built environment and infrastructure system significantly impacts the health of a community and how physically active it is. Studies have shown that walking and bicycling increase where infrastructure and built environment supports active transportation. The benefits communities receive from bicycle and pedestrian facilities creates opportunities and produces positive results. We are challenged to focus on the unique needs and safety concerns of our different populations in order to provide proper transportation equity. See additional information regarding transportation equity, from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Click HERE & the website for Pedestrian and Bike Info, Click HERE. See also the 2019 Dangerous by Design Report by Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition HERE.
Getting Around and Community Mobility: Community members often need to overcome built environment barriers in order to be physically active. The lack of sidewalks, connected parks and safe places to bike and walk are deterrents to successful community mobility. Our environment and its design has an overall impact on active transportation in our community and the ease of getting around from one place to another.
Items we consider when assessing our built environment:
Trails network system: segments, connectivity, gaps
Sidewalk existence, width
Bike lanes and routes
Cross walks: curb ramps, curb cuts, mountable curbs
Intersections: signals/visual lights, timing and audible sounds
Connecting our community networks is vital for improving access to schools, work, trails, parks, greenspace and public transit. Benefits include increasing opportunities for transportation choice and options, reduction in commuting costs, maximizing public transit investment and much more!
Image Source: Live Well Arizona
ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE
ETC has purposed to develop a diverse and inclusive forum that explores, develops, and advocates for improved safety, quality of life through active transportation equity, built environment and infrastructure, and local policies. The focus is to increase access to human-powered mobility that includes all forms of human-powered mobility: walking, running, biking, roller skating/blading, and wheelchair use, and the increased use of public transit for travel within the region.
Our role will focus on equity, built environment/infrastructure, and public policy as it relates to Active Transportation. These areas will provide the foundation for safe places for our community to be active so they can lead healthier lifestyles, increase individual as well as group physical activities and provide safe ways for all people to move throughout our community, for an improved quality of life for all of us.
WALKING EVANSVILLE
See a video featuring Mark Fenton, a public health, planning, and transportation expert who is helping America find its way to more active and livable cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Find out what problems exist in Evansville and the changes that Mr. Fenton suggests. Copyright 2011 Welborn Baptist Foundation, used with permission.