Transit and wellness

Lately, a lot of items in mass transit news have had a common theme: “transportation and wellness.” For example:

• While doing research on commuting, we discovered the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a project that surveys more than 1,000 U.S. adults per day and assigns them a well-being score based on six sub-indexes: life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, work environment, healthy behaviors and access to basic necessities. (On a 1-100 point index, with 100 being a state of maximum well-being, the overall score for the survey population was 49.6 in July 2010.) In August, the index published data regarding commute times. The results? People with the longest commutes scored the lowest on the Well-Being Index, and those with the shortest commute times (0-10 minutes) had less back pain and lower cholesterol, and they weighed less. Long commutes also take an emotional toll, according to the findings: “Among employees who take more than 90 minutes getting from home to work, 40% experienced worry for much of the previous day – significantly higher than the 28% among those with negligible commutes of 10 minutes or less,” the report said. “Conversely, workers with extremely long commutes were less likely to have experienced enjoyment for much of the previous day or to say they felt well-rested that day.” 
  
• As we prepared a report the other day, we took a look at the state-by-state totals of vehicle-miles driven per-capita. The list seemed remarkably similar to something else we had recently seen, so we checked and, sure enough, the states with the most vehicle miles also rank high on the state rankings for obesity. In fact, many of the states rankest highest for resident with a body mass index over 25 are the states with the highest per-person miles driven. Four states occupy the Top 10 list for each. Of course, it works the other way, too: New York, Hawaii and the District of Columbia rank at the bottom of the list for both weight and VMT. 
  
• A report released last month by the American Public Transportation Association confirms what we could suspect from the report mentioned above: People living near public transportation drive less, exercise more, live longer and generally are healthier than those living in places with inadequate transit. Considering factors ranging from air pollution, vehicle accidents, walking to and from transit stops and consumer cost savings, the report examines and attempts to quantify the different health impacts of transit use. 
  
• Another recent study demonstrates health benefits – including weight loss – of using transit with an analysis of the public health effects of a new rail line. When the nine-mile Lynx South Corridor Light Rail line opened in Charlotte, N.C., a group of physicians started tracking the weight and exercise habits of people living nearby. Collecting data before and after construction of the line, the physicians found that users of the rail line had lost an average of 6-7 pounds just eight months after construction.
  

So what does all of this mean for Indiana, a state with an underdeveloped transit system? Well, we rank 20th in overweight/obesity and 15th for vehicle miles per-capita. Which raises the question: As we discuss the economic and environmental benefits of transit, should we be working harder to make the case based on the health benefits of transit? Or would that be, um, biting off more than we can chew?