Across the country, metropolitan areas large and small are taking steps to improve local walking and biking opportunities. Broward County, Florida, is one of those communities.
With the Atlantic Ocean on its eastern edge and the Everglades Wildlife Management Area covering the west part of the county, Broward County’s nearly 2 million residents live mostly in a densely populated urban center that includes Fort Lauderdale. Heavy, fast traffic made walking and biking treacherous in some areas. High costs to build new roads seemed to put safe active transport out of reach.
After the opening of Seattle’s Second Avenue protected bike lane in 2014, the rate of bicycle collisions dropped by 82 percent. Tools from APHA and Transportation for America show how communities can enact complete streets programs.
Photo by Rochelle Carpenter, courtesy Transportation for America
But over years of partnering with others in the community, and with the help of a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the organization developed, adopted and promoted complete streets guidelines in conjunction with the Broward Regional Health Planning Council.
With the guidelines, a local organization showed how complete streets —which require streets to be planned and maintained to ensure safe and easy travel by many modes — make communities healthier and safer. By September 2017, half of the county’s jurisdictions had enacted complete streets programs.
The success in Broward County is just one of many case studies examined in two new publications from APHA and Transportation for America to help communities make walking and biking easier for their residents, in part through the use of metropolitan planning organizations.
Metropolitan planning organizations have long been part of the effort to increase walking and biking in communities across the U.S., said Transportation for America Director Kevin Thompson, MPA.
“Metro areas (and) metro planning agencies are trying to make it safer and more convenient to walk and bike,” Thompson told The Nation’s Health. “They’re hearing from their residents that their streets aren’t safe for them, and they’re hearing from the private sector that these amenities are important for building great places and supporting strong local businesses. But they’re also realizing that making it easier to walk and bike brings scores of public health benefits. When people can incorporate even just a little bit of exercise into their daily routine, it can have a dramatic impact on public health.”
In December, APHA published “Partnering with Metropolitan Planning Organizations to Advance Healthy Communities,” a primer for public health that explains what metropolitan planning organizations are — agencies created by federal law to allow local elected officials input into planning and implementation of federal transportation funds in large metropolitan areas — and how public health can work with them.
APHA and Transportation for America have collaborated to release two tools to help public health work with metropolitan planning organizations to make biking and walking a good and viable choice in many communities.
Photo by Steve Davis, courtesy Transportation for America
The 15-page primer, available for free on APHA’s website, was published in conjunction with Transportation for America, which at the same time released its guidebook, “Building Healthy & Prosperous Communities: How Metro Areas are Implementing More and Better Bicycling and Walking Projects.” The guidebook, produced in partnership with APHA, covers how metro areas of all sizes across the country have worked with Transportation for America to make biking and walking from place to place a “safe, convenient and enticing choice” through planning and development efforts, including public health.
Success stories in the free 150-page guidebook, available for download from Transportation for America, include tips on design guidance, complete streets policies and programs, data collection, performance measures, dedicated funding for biking and walking, walking and biking connections to public transit, grassroots community engagement and the public health implications of how people use transportation.
The two pieces of the toolkit are meant to be complements to each other, said Kate Robb, MSPH, senior program manager of APHA’s environmental health portfolio.
“Using both the guidebook and the primer, public health advocates can get an understanding of the transportation process and how they can partner with transportation planners,” Robb told The Nation’s Health. “We live in a multimodal world, and transportation plans impact public health.”
With the tools, users can see how other communities have built partnerships with metropolitan planning organizations to great success, such as Nashville’s efforts to use more of the federal transportation dollars the city receives to projects that support walking, bicycling and public transportation as a means to improve health, Thompson said.
Each case study, such as Broward County, includes a breakdown of the problems the organization wanted to tackle, the steps taken to address the problems, a detailed timeline, a list of roadblocks and how they were overcome, a list of community partners and the results of their efforts. Each one, Thompson said, shows the benefits of partnering with others in the community, particularly public health.
APHA’s primer will help public health advocates find ways to start working with metropolitan planning organizations if they have not in the past, Robb said, but also offers ways to deepen established relationships throughout their communities.
To download the primer and guidebook, visit bit.ly/APHAtransportation.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
