Drive in Moderation
Decatur Metro | August 10, 2010
This slightly insulting, charty map from GOOD juxtaposes state rankings for allowance of walking, biking, transiting and driving to work with obesity rates. Click it to zoom-in and analyze the heck out of it.
Not surprisingly, the strongest correlations look to be that walking and biking to work make people thinner, while driving to the office makes people fatter.
Transit, on the other hand, seems to be a slightly more complex animal when it comes to any relation to obesity. While it can be a good complement to walking and biking states, it can also contribute relatively little to overall health if it’s transit that people drive to and from (check out New Jersey on the map).
Transit that benefits overall health not only requires an actual train or bus and a supporting infrastructure, but also communities conducive to walking or biking to transit stops.
P.S. In the map above, GA ranks 49th in both people who walk or bike to work.
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Not surprisingly, the strongest correlations look to be that walking and biking to work make people thinner, while driving to the office makes people fatter.
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Driving to the office can’t make you fat. You’ll only get fat if you don’t exercise and you eat too much. Driving is part of the exercise side of the equation — and maybe a small part — but it is entirely unrelated to the eating side.
The point being, personal discipline is the key factor here. Not infrastructure. All the bike lanes in the world won’t necessarily make people ride bikes or eat less.
One other thought is that climate is a big part of this. I would bet that one reason you have more cyclists in SF and Oregon, for example, is climate. It’s just easier to bike to work when it is not 98 degrees, as it has been here for weeks now. Whether there are bike lanes or not, it takes a lot of will power to suffer through the heat when riding to and from work every day. (Ditto in the winter when it is very cold.) Most people simply don’t have the stomach for it.
Your climate supposition might have some merit to it, but I’m not sure. If climate were such a factor, then the Northeastern states and their long, brutal winters should be at the bottom too. But they’re not (Look at Massachusetts and Vermont, for example.) And the weather in D.C. aint exactly fit for a picnic a lot of the time, yet it’s # one across the board.
Not necessarily, because the northeastern summers are so much more mild. Here we have both very hot summers and the winter is cold enough to dissuage bike commuting. But point taken on DC.
D.C. is #1 because it doesn’t have rural areas to pull the walk, bike and transit averages down and the driving averages up.
True, DM. In fact, this sort of comparison probably has more to with rural vs. urban than anything. There are generally more obese people in rural areas. The exceptions are the states like Colorado where many people move for the outdoor activities.
“All the bike lanes in the world won’t necessarily make people ride bikes or eat less.”
Ever been to Amsterdam?
I think the bike system in Holland grew out of a culture of people who bike everywhere. It’s also a very flat place, unlike Georgia, Atlanta or even Decatur.
I do think Decatur is much more into biking and walking than other places, but we could always improve.
Climate is certainly a factor, but Florida and Louisiana are both hotter and more humid than here, and they bike more than we do. Well, it’s flatter in those places, so easier to bike.
I think there is a link here that is interesting. When I ride my bike to do an errand within the city of Decatur, I’m met by gazes of people who find it unusual, interesting and highly commendable that I’m doing that. Never mind that I’m only biking a mile or less. I do think more folks bike or walk in Decatur, and it’s something we should encourage.
But look at how much consternation cropped up on this board because one of my neighbors parks bikes in front of his house to prevent folks from parking cars there, across from Adair Park. Never has bothered me, as I almost always walk to that park, as do most of the people in the neighborhood.
You are so right on that! Baby Nellie and I walk or bike from College Heights to Yogurt Tap or the library all the time or on Sundays from our house in Oakhurst to Thumbs Up and people look at me weirdly and offer me rides.
I agree that climate is an often overlooked factor in this discussion, but I’m not sure I can agree that personal discipline is the “key factor” in this discussion.
Implying that seems to assume that driving will always be the easiest option and that you need some form of personal discipline to do any of the harder alternatives. In Portland, I stayed less than a quarter-mile from a train stop where a train would show up every 5-7 minutes. I could be the laziest person in the world and I still think that short walk and the ride downtown was easier than getting in a car and going downtown and trying to find parking near my destination.
I’m not saying that personal discipline isn’t a key factor, just that infrastructure IS a more important factor.
Another way to think about it: your level of personal discipline is influenced by the levels of infrastructure around you, not the other way around.
I’m not saying that personal discipline isn’t a key factor, just that infrastructure IS a more important factor.
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If you were right, putting a treadmill or eliptical machine in every home — infrastructure on a micro level — would generate a lot more exercise. But I recall hearing from more than one source that most home fitness equipment eventually grows cobwebs. Likewise, most news years day resolution gym memberships are cancelled within a few months. And of course, anyone can run a few miles on weekends. Yet millions of people do absolutely no exercise of any kind. You really think they’re itching for a chance to walk/bike/run, if only we’d build more bike lanes and mass transit? Maybe you are right, but I seriously doubt it. In fact, every day I ride my bike past dozens of Decaturites driving home from downtown, midtown, and Emory. It really is a lot easier to depress a gas pedal than it is to depress a bike pedal.
On the other hand, people who care about fitness are out there, even now, biking, running, etc. They don’t seem to care that there aren’t more bike lanes, tracks, marta buses, etc.
So from what I can tell, to make that comparison you’re putting exercise bikes and infrastructure on an equal footing, when the difference between the two is quite large.
Exercise bikes are a unitasker. All they can do is give you exercise. A walkable, bikeable infrastructure’s primary goal is to get people from point A to B on foot and by bike. Exercise is a secondary result, not the primary.
Most people don’t make decisions based on which mode of transportation will help them lose the most weight. They do what’s most convenient. I think we’re both on the same page regarding that. What I’m saying is that walk combined with transit can be just as convenient as driving. It just isn’t in Atlanta thanks to our infrastructure.
Bikes – which you reference in your original post – are a slightly more difficult test case, because they are all about proximity and topography. I agree that it’s harder to encourage bike use with bike lanes in Atlanta than it is to encourage a person to take a brand-new train that’s .2 miles from their house.
The point being, personal discipline is the key factor here. Not infrastructure. All the bike lanes in the world won’t necessarily make people ride bikes or eat less.
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True, every individual is in charge of what they eat and how much. But making it feasible, safety-wise, to ride a bike across town gives someone the option of combining physical activity with their commute. Since we know that particular choice contributes to good health–not to mention generates less air pollution, uses that much less fossil fuel, and contributes that much less to motor vehicle traffic congestion–what’s not to like? Public transit options can have the same salutary effect. I commuted to north Fulton Co. a few years ago and for a short time I could reach the workplace via MARTA (train to end of line, then the bus). Walking from home to the MARTA station and back gave me a good half an hour of exercise each day. When employer moved their office and MARTA wasn’t an option any more, I was forced to drive an average of 1.5-2 hrs/day and found it extremely difficult to fit a walk in at either end of the day. (Traffic being what it is in Atlanta, it was virtually impossible to predict or control what time I got home in the evening.) And I didn’t even have a family to take care of, or it would have been an even bigger challenge to find time for exercise.
Plus, taking more exercise tends to make many (even most) people eat less.
It isn’t realistic for me to bike or ride to work, but taking Marta does, like it did for you STG, give me about 30-45 minutes of walking a day. From what I’ve seen the more car dependent a place is, the more obese people there are. The exceptions seem to be the states that attract fit people interested in outdoor activities, mostly in the West.
An hour commute? I hope you were able to find a job closer in! I really hate that for you.
“Driving to the office can’t make you fat.”
Nonetheless. The data proves it does.
From my observations there is definitely a link. I have extended family in a semi-rural part of Alabama (the only state behind Georgia) and they rarely walk anywhere other than from the car to the door. My middle-aged inlaws and 3 nephews and a niece, teen-agers and college age, live on the same land as their grandmother, maybe 200 hundred yards apart, but they always drive to visit her. Always. Of the 9 people (not counting my 77 year old mother-in-law) who live there, 7 are obese. Granted, this is anecdotal, but I’ve been there enough times to see how many obese people there are in the shopping centers and to see that walking (or biking) is practically non-existent. Couple this with a high fat, Southern fried diet and it is no surprise that the Southern states have the most obese population. I’m somewhat surprised that Georgia is so low on the walking and biking list, since Atlanta seems to be an exercise obsessed city. But then I remember the days when I was in the parking lot striping business and, when we were striping shopping center lots near gyms, all the complaints we got from people who had to walk an extra hundred feet from their car to the gym.
My hunch is that this map reflects the national state-level distribution of poverty.
Well, the bottom 5 probably are the poorest states, but those 5 are also mostly rural and 4 of them are Southern (traditional diet unhealthy).
It does reflect poverty. Just ran the stats. This is one of annoying figures that looks cool but doesn’t reflect true underlying mechanisms.
But it also reflects being Southern and being rural. 8 of the bottom ten are Southern (7 if you don’t count Kentucky) and all of them are more rural type states (Oklahoma and West Virginia )
So poverty and transportation options are mutually exclusive?
Definitely not. In fact, poverty is becoming more prevalent in rural and suburban areas where there are no options.
mutually exclusive? I dont follow? I would guess that places/states that can afford to support alternative transport are also wealthier.
Im just saying that I dont think the obesity statistics have any causal relationship to the transport stats that are in that figure. What you’ve got in that figure is a classic case of the ecological fallacy – inference is being made about individuals from state level data. Studies on driving and obesity at the individual level show very very small effects.
But aren’t you talking about state level data when it comes to poverty? The poorest states are the most obese. But they are also the most dependent on cars. Both involve state level data. I don’t follow your reasoning. True, you cant prove causation for any of these things, bu, just looking at the chart, I’d say the critical factors, starting with most important:
1. Being Southern. With the South by far the most obese region, it is plain that the culture here plays a big role.
2. Being poor. Bad diet because bad food is cheaper.
3. Living in a rural area. After the South, the Farm belt is the next most obese region. Like the South, very car dependent, though diet probably is bigger factor.
Brianc – I’m with you. I’m simply saying, like you, that transportation isn’t likely to be the important factor here, which is counter to the misleading figure that started this post. Being poor is linked causally to becoming obese. Riding a bike to work is not.
I like that you finally mentioned the word ‘culture’. I don’t want to open up the whole ‘we have to look like Barbie or be super-buff’ debate, but if you are part of a culture that doesn’t put much emphasis on appearance or health (both from an eating and exercise standpoint) then you aren’t going to worry about it.
While I think DC benfits from not having any rural folks in the sample, it’s also an area packed with young singles who, on average, are going to be more into attracting mates and thus more into their physical appearance. If you live in a rural environment where everyone around you is 30 lbs overweight and you’re only 10 lbs overweight, you become quite the catch. But then if you move to Buckhead suddenly you drop down the list a bit.
Question, while we’re on the subject of bicycling — does anyone know of a program or class that can teach an adult like me how to ride a bicycle? I never learned how.
try this link…
http://www.atlantabike.org/classschedule
Yup, go take one of the Atlanta Bike Coalition’s classes for adult beginners. They are a lot of fun.
As this hot grim summer grinds on, I increasingly think that the #1 variable to encourage walking and biking is shade.
It can also help for employers to have a small shower room on the premises–you get sweaty pretty quickly at times like this. Bike racks near the entrance are nice too.
Sort of late to this interesting discussion, but I would like to suggest that the distribution of body types influences this. These were called somatotypes when I was in school…endo, meso, and ectomorph, from thin to thick. Wikipedia says this is no longer in fashion, though I imagine that people are in general larger (taller) than ever, probably due to better nutrition and genetics…mix that with excessive calories and we put on weight. Though, as a cycling, MARTA-riding endomorph I find it hard to gain weight.
Also, the fact that many people still associate the bicycle with recreation, not transportation, doesn’t exactly encourage cycling as a means of travel.
A cool, damp towel works in lieu of a shower, TOK.
Oh, yeah, I make do (no shower at my workplace), but a shower would be nice. With this weather I’m totally soaked walking into the office.
I enter our building by the freight elevator. Standing for a minute in the cold air pouring from the shaft dries me quickly. A fan will cool almost as well as a shower.
For those considering doing this, it pays to ride in cycling clothes (wicking spandex) and change into a work warerobe, unless your dress code is very casual.