Transportation and Health Resource Hub - Case Study

Tennessee’s built environment and health case studies

This collection of case studies in Tennessee, primarily in rural communities, address the integration of health through master plans, corridor studies, sidewalk improvements, multi-modal access, and even a community kitchen. Each short case study (1-2 pages) has key lessons and recommendations that can be used by local advocates, community leaders, and governmental staff to identify strategies for integrating health. These case studies demonstrate the possibilities of integrating health into rural communities and small towns.

Metropolitan planning organization ideas to improve and provide more walking and bicycling projects

The initiatives spearheaded by the MPOs profiled in this guidebook have resulted in more walking and bicycling projects in communities across the country. The enclosed case studies, illustrating eight distinct strategies, provide inspiration, ideas, and replicable tactics for MPOs to emulate or consider. Eight case studies explain how regions have implemented walking and bicycling projects. The cases detail contextual factors, partnerships, timelines, steps in the decision making processes, and how communities dealt with barriers to implementation.  

Health promoting community design: outline of expected returns

This toolkit provides general findings from project returns of health-promoting projects. With a better informed understanding of project outcomes, practitioners can expand efforts to create healthier and more livable places. This resource demonstrates that health promoting community design features hold the potential to provide economic, health, and ecological co-benefits to communities. Case studies from across the country, consolidated here, provide useful reference for those considering how or why to build healthier communities.

Oregon Avenue protected bicycle lane: a case study of a health & transportation partnership in Klamath Falls, Oregon

This document summarizes the planning and coalition building process that delivered a protected bike lane to rural Oregon. This case study documents the efforts of two Sky Lakes Health System workers embarked upon to merge thinking and funding from the health and transportation domains in order to tackle a lack of active transportation infrastructure in Klamath Falls.  Study findings offer transportation and public health professionals a model for collaboration even when funds are in short supply and new infrastructure designs cause initial anxiety with potential users.

Envisioning healthy corridors: lessons from four communities

A supplement to the 2016 publication Building Healthy Corridors: Transforming Urban and Suburban Arterials into Thriving Places, this report describes the experiences of and lessons learned from the four demonstration corridors that participated in the second phase of ULI’s Healthy Corridors project and provides a set of common recommendations from both phases of the project that can be implemented to improve health along commercial corridors. The four corridors are located in Colorado, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. The deep dive into these corridors study discuss the details of each project, results of the study, and the identified the next steps and lessons learned. Lessons learned include looking beyond the corridor and capitalizing on assets that can be used for connections, prioritize areas that contribute to the corridor’s character, the importance of collecting good data for the corridor, consideration of obtaining local control of streets, creating smaller stakeholder groups, considering development of a health impact assessment, using data to develop health related and community goals and priorities, and creating a collaborative agreement between jurisdictions.

Blind spots: how unhealthy corridors harm communities and how to fix them

In the context of transportation networks, urban and suburban arterials are an essential but often overlooked and misunderstood link in a transportation chain, and they have outsized influence on their communities. They often struggle to balance the competing functions of moving cars quickly through a place and moving people to and from shops, restaurants, and other businesses safely. The report team reviews these commercial corridors regarding 1) Transportation 3) Health and safety 2) Economics 4) Equity. The results of the corridor audit are summarized by the overall health of the corridors, regional distribution, difference between urban and suburban corridors, and crash characteristics. Part 2 of the document presents causes and solutions from a policies and practices standpoint, including corridor case study “scorecards.”