How Active Transportation Leads to a Healthy Community

A healthy community is one where members from all groups work together to ensure everyone has healthy living options, regardless of their socioeconomic status. While active transportation plays a large role in ensuring a healthy community, the significance of the role active transportation often noted. Whether people can bike, walk or use other forms of active transportation is an important element in your community’s health sector. Learn more about how active transportation leads to a healthier community and what you can do to encourage accessibility for everyone in the rest of this blog.

Why walking is an important form of active transportation

Walking is one of the most popular forms of active transportation that also doubles as a method of exercise. According to “Step it Up! The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Walking and Walkable Communities,” walking is an important public health strategy because it is one of the most common forms of exercise in the United States. Walking is accessible to multiple age and socioeconomic groups while also serving as a method of transportation and healthy activity.

Why biking is an important form of active transportation

In addition to walking, many Americans choose to bicycle as a form of transportation or physical activity. Around 34 percent of Americans over the age of three-years-old rode a bike at least once in the past year. Bicycling is popular to persons with disabilities as well and is a preferred form of exercise for those with multiple scoliosis. While biking isn’t as popular as walking nationwide, it is growing as a popular form of exercise and active transportation option.

How to improve active transportation infrastructure in your community

While 30 percent of Americans use walking as a form of exercise on any given day, only three percent of Americans use bicycling as a form of exercise. This highlights the factor that accessibility contributes to the lack of bicycling infrastructure in the United States when compared to walking infrastructure. Local planning and transportation partners can work together to encourage inclusive active transportation that promotes exercise in your area. Your community will benefit from putting time, energy and resources into societal factors that will affect everyone’s health. Contact us at Move Utah to learn more about how you can improve active transportation in your community.