Transportation and Health Resources

Shawn Leight led a discussion on how transportation professional could deal with challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Measures and Guides for Linking Transportation and Health

Measures and Guides for Linking Transportation and Health

Measures and Guides for Linking Transportation and Health

Walking, biking, transit, and other forms of active transportation have been shown to provide healthier options over single user vehicle trips when getting from point A to B; and can also be an ideal way to reduce carbon emissions and increase safety.

Transportation plays an important role in people's health, safety, well-being, and quality of life. Recognizing this, ITE is collaborating with Streetsmart to develop the beta version of this research synthesis, resource clearinghouse, and communication platform. Over the past year, Streetsmart convened several focus groups in planning, engineering, and public health to find out more about the challenges of integrating health into transportation. Here is what the 35 focus group participants, drawn in part from the Institute for Transportation Engineers, the American Public Health Association, and the National Association of Regional Councils, had to say.

In recent years, the concept of sustainable development is increasingly appearing in various spheres and contexts. In the broadest sense, sustainable development can be defined as the concept of social development, whose core is the satisfaction of society's needs in a way that does not reduce or in any way limit the development potential of the generations to come. Successful implementation of sustainable development ideas should be reflected in decent life for all inhabitants, social inclusion, increased environmental responsibility, and efficient economy and prosperity in accordance with the constraints of the planet.

Bicycling and Walking in the United States 2016 Benchmarking Report

Transportation’s Role in Public Health Transportation plays an important role in health, well-being, and quality of life. The transportation system provides access to goods and services critical to health such as affordable/healthy foods, health care, education, and career opportunities. Active transportation options are known to increase physical activity, reduce obesity, and lower rates of disease. Transportation is a top contributor to urban air pollution, with major impacts to respiratory and lung health. The transportation system has a significant impact on the health of our communities.

A desire to protect and enhance public health has motivated improvements to arterial roads and corridors. There are countless "on the ground" examples that illustrate this. In 2016, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) published a report on its Healthy Corridor Project describing how four communities in the United States implemented improvements along specific corridors with the goal of making positive changes in the health of the people who live, work, and travel along them. The improvements targeted health by expanding the set of relevant issues to include food access, physical activity, economic opportunities, and affordable housing in addition to pedestrian and bicycle safety.

President's Message: Leading the Way to Make Active Transportation Safe While Improving Health

Active Transportation Users Seize the Day to Set Safe Speed Limits

ITE’s Role in Integrating Transport & Public Health - Presentation

ITE’s Role in Integrating Transport & Public Health - Paper

How Transportation Touches Health

Transportation systems influence our lives every day, shaping where we live, work, learn, and play. Public health protects and improves the health of people and communities, with a focus on prevention. Transportation also plays a central role in community health, determining residents’ access to jobs and to essential goods and services, such as affordable and healthy foods and medical care. Thus, where transportation inequities exist—disproportionately in low-income communities and communities of color—they can negatively impact health.

As federal and state funding increasingly emphasizes economic and “triple bottom line” (economic, environmental, social/health) return on transportation investments, there is a need for methods to evaluate that return, particularly since the recession. For example, a key criterion of the Transportation Infrastructure Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program (which funds capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure) is that the project can demonstrate generation of economic development. The 2010 Government Accountability Office report on statewide transportation planning found that, “in selecting projects, states assigned greater importance to factors such as political and public support than to economic analysis of project benefits and costs.”