Dangerous by Design 2024

A historic increase in pedestrian deaths from 2020 to 2021 shocked many, but this epidemic continues to get worse. In 2022, the most recent year with complete federal data, the number of people who were struck and killed while walking grew to 7,522, marking a 40-year high. This represents an astonishing 75 percent increase in … Continued

Complete Streets Transportation

Dangerous by Design 2022

While the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic upended many aspects of daily life, including how people get around, one terrible, long-term trend was unchanged: the alarming increase in people being struck and killed while walking.  The number of people struck and killed while walking reached yet another new high in 2020. More than 6,500 people were struck and killed … Continued

Smart growth strategies for a public health problem in Louisville, KY

Over half of the residents of metropolitan Louisville, Kentucky, are considered seriously overweight, and obesity rates in the state have risen in recent years while reported outdoor physical activity has declined – despite public relations campaigns to promote biking and walking.

Now the city is trying a new approach to encourage its residents to get outside and get active. With help from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation, Louisville is changing its streets and its infrastructure to make walking and biking more viable, attractive transportation options. Among the initiatives, Louisville recently built “the city’s first bicycle lane and ensured that the redevelopment of a low-income housing project included small ‘pocket’ parks, improved traffic patterns and wider and safer sidewalks.”

As an article in the New York Times explains, obesity is a serious health concern for the city but also poses a threat to Louisville’s economic viability:

[T]he foundation made its first grant when Jerry Abramson, then the mayor, had begun to worry that obesity was lowering Louisville’s attractiveness.

“For businesses, a healthy work force is more productive and less costly, so it became a competitiveness issue,” Mr. Abramson said. “Every city was offering tax incentives, every city was offering real estate deals but not every city had the weight problem we do.”

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Biking and walking advocates thank Sec. of Transportation for making biking walking safer, more important

Some of us here at SGA, through our other work at Transportation for America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, joined with other advocates for biking and walking to ride to the US DOT last Friday to thank Sec. LaHood for recent policy changes to include the needs of bikers and walkers in transportation planning. Check out the video from the T4America youtube channel.

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