If you would like to see more Federal money spent on local projects to promote and make safer more bicycling and walking, call your Congressional Representative and ask him or her to be a co-sponsor on H.R. 4722, the Active Community Transportation Act. It is important to make the call this week, in support of the National Bike Summit.

Perhaps it is ironic that I follow an angry post about generationally-irresponsible recovery spending with a call to borrow more money against the future, but there is a big difference between investing to leave something for the next generation vs spending money to help the current generation cover the mistakes of the present.

The Active Community Transportation Act would make grant money available to communities for investments in infrastructure that promote walking and biking.

I want to keep this post positive, but I cannot ignore the sense that many people feel biking and walking are recreational activities and should therefore be lower priority. But in fact, because the impact of small investments here can be so large, they should be a higher priority.

The types of projects grant money like this could support could include components as small as improved crosswalks. For about $10,000, we could install a solar-powered pushbutton-activated flashing light and repaint a crosswalk so that dozens of kids and their parents would feel safe walking to school. We could deploy several of these across a busy, wide stretch of road that serves to divide part of our community and effectively "knit" the town together and reduce reliance on car trips. We could make it easier for people to choose to ride the commuter rail and walk to church by bringing the focus down to the sidewalks and streets and investing is small things that pull our communities together.

The benefits are not just aesthetic. We have a childhood obesity epidemic to combat. We have a national health crisis that, regardless of what insurance companies may or may not be doing, is driving the cost of health care higher and higher. We have recurring cycles of foreign oil dependency and occasional bouts of awareness with global warming, carbon emissions, and general sustainability. Do more than buy a Prius. Thank about ways to change the way we live to be more sustainable and more responsible to the future and then ask what stands in the way?

Active Transportation is a path through the obstacles. It's a part of the solution that, unlike many government projects, is more efficient and has "externality benefits" rather than costs.

It's efficient because this kind of grant program encourages community-based action. Our local advisory committee would gather information, talk to our neighbors, participate in the grant application process and assist in project managing and monitoring the implementation. The overall grants will be designed to support networks of improvements costing $5 to 15 million each.

"Externality benefits" are the intangible things like improving the strength of a community. It would be impossible to measure the economic impact on house prices down to such a micro level, but I would bet that over time, the increase in walking and perception of safety across a divisive roadway would translate into higher home values. I know we moved from one house because the street was busy and didn't make an offer an another because it was "on the other side" of the road that we'd have to cross to get to school. Not everyone will share these valuations...but when small projects like these are happening all over the country, the sum effect has to be a net gain.

Will there be boondoggles and "bike paths to nowhwere?" Perhaps. But at least then we can start talking about the best way to do things. How many bike paths could have been built with the money that was used to make it possible for me to drive to the airport in 30 minutes instead of 45? I'm guessing a few hundred thousand.

The popular understanding of the origin of street design in Boston goes back to the original wisdom of cows pastured on the common and commuting home to farms. Although this is more folklore than fact, it does reflect the liklihood that streets were developed piecemeal in response to short-term needs and not as a part of an organized plan.

Such is always the case, unless a community has a blank canvas upon which to write...and millions of dollars of funding...and popular support for centralized design and planning of an urban utopia. Expect that confluence of opportunity sometime in the next century. In the meantime, improvements are opportunistic: a bike lane here, an updated intersection there...a new development bringing potentially more problems but at least some cash to manage solutions. When those micro-opportunties happen...advocates need to be ready to propose improvements, but these improvements should be seen NOT as accomodations for interest groups, but as opportunities to develop "complete streets" - recognizing that...

The streets of our cities and towns are an important part of the livability of our communities. They ought to be for everyone, whether young or old, motorist or bicyclist, walker or wheelchair user, bus rider or shopkeeper. But too many of our streets are designed only for speeding cars, or worse, creeping traffic jams.--National Complete Streets Coalition

Increasingly, communities are adopting policies to incorporate this new kind of paradigm. Even as they do so, however, they are not immune to the misunderstandings of those who view these measures as expensive luxuries that detract from "fixing potholes." What opponents fail to realize is that today's potholes were yesterday's bogs and other "cow obstacles."

Complete Streets is not about a master plan to impose a new design on cities, but an effort to develop a shared use strategy that recognizes how our needs are changing. We need safer ways for active transportation to be supported in our communities. Partly, it is "aspirational"--we do want to encourage more walking and biking--but successful change looks for real needs: where are people currently trying to walk and bike? It can never be about "build it and they will come," it has to be "thank goodness they finally did something about that bridge!"

Adopting a Complete Streets strategy means coming together as a community to adopt a policy that commits to a vision of the future where the needs of all users are considered. It provides a reference point for "why do we want to do this?" and "why are we doing this?" so that changes/improvements are not seen as accommodations or concessions to appease a minority of outlier users, but as necessary steps towards ensuring a better future for all.

A few Halloweens ago, I picked up a barrel of "Halloween Pretzels" from Costco--mini-pretzels in orange and black bags in a big plastic container. About the ONLY one happy about that choice was our dog who got into the "treats" when the untouched bowl was left on the floor inadvertently. I believe we finally choked down the last remnant sometime in the following spring. Having learned my lesson, I am happy to see a giant bag full of candy in the kitchen now awaiting Saturday night.

Thousands of empty calories await as we prepare to march our children around the neighborhood in this annual ritual of excess. Given the explosion of childhood obesity in America, am I worried? Not really.

I've been following a number of stories in the past few weeks connecting the obesity crisis in America to health care. CBS's Sunday Morning devoted an entire show to "Size Matters." A radio program on NPR last week devoted an hour to a discussion of Overweight America. The radio show considered, in particular the question of how we advocate for weight loss without "blaming" overweight people.

We focus far too much on symptoms of a problem that has much deeper roots than can be addressed directly. For solutions, we leap to radical and drastic methods like surgery or the search for medications that will fix us. We guilt each other into diets or pursuing unpleasant exercise routines we hate...and then we watch the food we eat selectively--seizing on the most minute reports of the bad or goodness of a particular food, while oblivious to a landscape of excess that surrounds us.

But I digress. The folks at Zillow, where you can look up the value of your neighbor's house, have created a Trick or Treat Housing Index for Seattle (their company location) neighborhoods. It's basically a list of affluent, walkable neighborhoods--big surprise--but what I find interesting is the walkable connection.

A 30-minute walk once a year with your kids is not going to compensate for eating thousands of calories in a glorious choco-fest of indulgence this weekend, but perhaps living in a place where this traditional activity is easy will. 20-minutes of walking to a train and from the station to work everyday does make a difference. Deciding, several times per week, that it would be enjoyable to go for a walk around the neighborhood adds up to many miles of exercise. Hopping on a bike with a kid in the bike seat to go to the library occasionally...it all adds up to an active lifestyle that is foreign to many Americans who have become isolated in car-dependent housing developments.

So I look forward to enjoying Halloween and the "fruits of our labor," so to speak, with no guilt or worry. We will eat crap and be happy. We will join our neighbors in this annual tradition that fills our side streets with parents and children walking from door to door, meeting each other, and collecting candy. It's a great American tradition, but what is great about it is not just getting the candy but the whole experience that is fundamentally-rooted in an active, community-engaged lifestyle that reminds us of how simple, safe--and relatively healthy--our lives were before we over-thought and over-did everthing.

A few weeks ago, I set up an IdeaScale web site to gather suggestions for ways to improve Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety in Westwood. It has turned out to be an effective, easy way to collect ideas and our challenge now is to do something about those ideas.

The site is simple to use--that is its principal virtue. I have experimented with other online tools to help improve communication and/or organize things before, with mixed results:

• The WestwoodWiki went nowhere--I think mainly because it requires a great deal of participation, awareness, and faith that one's investment of time will be meaningful. A wiki is a website anyone can edit--allowing group collaboration in drafting documents, etc.--and although I believe it can be a great tool to foster civic engagement, and there are great examples of this in larger cities like Melbourne, Australia or Davis, California, it is hard to get the ball rolling, so to speak.
• WestwoodBlog has been successful, but inconsistent. It totally depends on my effort to stir up news and events and is most valuable when there are "hot" issues in town. If I post something about Westwood Station--the controversial development project that is now stalled due to the economic slowdown--it generates a ton of activity. If I encourage and solicit candidates for Town Election to post their ideas, this generates some commentary. And the topic I created for Walkable Westwood, has been a good place for me to publicize our efforts on Ped/Bike Safety...but the blog is a very general purpose, news-oriented site that many read, but few contribute.

The IdeaScale Site has generated 44 ideas and included several hundred people participating by voting those ideas up or down.

• I seeded the site with many of the ideas our group had already been talking about. This gave us a place to document and discuss those ideas. We had talked about circulating spreadsheets and drafting a group report, but I found publishing the ideas moved us forward more effectively.
• The site was relatively easy to use. I had a few reports of difficulty...and very few people went to the trouble of creating a login account--but as anonymous, guest users, they were able to quickly submit ideas and comments (60-plus comments so far).
• The "discussion" has stayed on track. On the blog, things can go off on tangents since there is no overall purpose, but on the IdeaScale site, it is so focused on a single purpose, I think this has avoided some of the community management problems that could result from just posting a blog item and asking for feedback.

The big question is "what next?" I believe our committee has had great discussions so far and is building an increased awareness of active transporation issues in Town, but I want us to start creating some "small victories"--little accomplishments that demonstrate we are putting ideas to work.

At our last meeting, we began to work through the ideas submitted. I exported the ideas into an Excel spreadsheet and, based on suggestions from other members of the group, created scoring columns for urgency, population impact, and relative effort--summing a 3-point scale so that when addedd together, each idea received a score ranging from 3 to 9. Then, we can sort the ideas and identify the most urgent (immediate safety issues) ideas affecting the largest number of people with the fewest obstacles to implementation as projects we should form subcommittees or working groups to address.

We began by sorting the ideas by their IdeaScale vote score and then working down through the list. The process of discussion itself was valuable--given this framework for approaching it. I projected the spreadsheet on a wall from my laptop and edited it in real-time. For each idea, I clicked on the hyperlink from the spreadsheet to a web browser that allowed us to read the full idea submitted and see the comments. In another browser window, we used google maps to view satellite imagery of the specific locations involved.

As a group, we then reached a consensus on the 3 ratings for each item. Unfortunately, our meeting was already running very late, so we only managed to review the first ten ideas--but along the way we have already begun to identify some projects and priorities and talk about solutions with people in the room who can make a difference--e.g. the Town Engineer, Safety Officer, Town Planner, Planning Board members, PTA representatives, DPW representatives, and other interested people. At our previous meetings, we have had a lot of discussion, but I believe this more structured approach is leading us towards a more methodical review of ideas.

It's early. This was just one meeting and as it approached 10pm, I was torn between the desire to get things done versus the reality that everyone needed to get home to their families. It was not a simple, "that's a 1, this is a 3," kind of discussion as people have many perspectives on each idea and it is incredibly valuable to hear that input as a group. But we began to get into a rhythm of discussion and then a conclusion that, ok, that sounds like it affects the whole town...or, ok that will require work, but it is not impossible..."

I'll report more as we progress.

Last Wednesday, Westwood schools postponed their participation in International Walk to School day due to a torrential downpour. This morning, we await the dawn to melt the first frost of the season, as the thermometer at my house reads 34 degrees and the Norwood airport reports 28. But clear skies should make this a spectacular fall day.

Meanwhile, the concerned parents and bureacrats in Saratoga have eeked at bit closer to permitting kids to ride bikes to school at Maple Avenue Middle School. The Board of Education did in fact strike down the 1994 policy forbidding bike riding, but transferred authority to the local school principal to determine whether it was safe or not. Advocates for change aren't thrilled--it simply transfers the issue to the local school where administrators may continue to say it is not safe, nothing has changed, etc. But I think this is a victory as it opens the door to a local discussion and changes the conversation from "bike riding will not be tolerated" to "how can we make this school safe?"

The reality is that the perception of bike riding as an unsafe activity persists no matter what official policy is adopted. Parents are not going to encourage/allow their kids to ride bikes if they feel it is unsafe. Adults will not bike commute to work if they fear for their lives. Those who extol the virtues of active transportation must find solutions to real and perceived dangers through a combination of what are described as the 4 E's of planning: Education, Engineering, Enforcement, and Encouragement. Additionally, a 5th E, Evaluation, is critical to success of Safe Routes to Schools programs as it "closes the loop" on making sure great ideas, as they are implemented, actually work.

These success stories from communities that have improved their walkability illustrate the key theme of inclusion. Change must "bottom up," it cannot be imposed from above or simply "fixed" by changing a law or building a sidewalk. How we get there is vitally important to success.

Measuring a baseline is the first step towards assessing and ultimately achieving improvements to walkability. Walk Score has generated a ton of news lately--winning a Rockefeller Grant to improve their service, providing a quantitative basis for the CEOs for Cities study that illustrated a link between walkability and housing prices and providing a measuring stick for communities to compare themselves to one another. A quick lookup of our new home versus our old one confirms what I already knew: a 12% increase in walkability, although it feels MUCH greater.

Walk Score is imprecise--it depends on searching google maps for known points of interest like grocery stores and other amenities. But it gives us some relative basis for comparison and can prompt a discussion of what factors go into generating a higher score. Ultimately, when the Walk Score shows up in real estate listings, it becomes a "marketing tool," and that's not bad--it helps quantify the often vague assertions in home listings of "walk to shops, parks, trails" which could mean there is a patch of green grass somewhere withing 2 miles of a house. It helps get people talking specifics and reinforces the idea that walkability is a valuable topic.

I'm also impressed by what the League of Illinois Bicyclists has done in compiling a "Complete Streets" audit of road construction projects. They evaluated 46 recent Chicago area road projects for pedestrian and bicyclist safety and generated a 100-point scale that combines ratings for ped, bike, crossing and context to arrive at a "complete" score for the project. That study, published today, was cited by the Chicago Tribune to support their conclusion that "the best streets are built by those who will use them." Projects administered by the state department of transportation scored lowest, while locally-planned and originated projects scored highest. Big surprise: central planning fails to serve the needs of the community.

These are two examples of data-driven analysis--and how it can influence the public debate. As we talk to our neighbors, we hear so many ideas and so many observations...but it is hard to get from talk to action. The big "deal breaker" of course is money--and I'd love to hear how cash-strapped communities have come up with funds to pay for projects. The short answer is that it is not a short process. There are grant programs that take time. The planning takes time and resources of busy people. At every step, there are questions of impossibility: how could we ever afford that?! The residents will not support it. Someone will object...whatever. These kinds of quantiative tools--combined with a more qualitative--quality of life--perspective and vision for the future are the best recipe for progress...

According to land use strategist Chris Leinberger, speaking at the Walk21 conference in New York City yesterday and reported on StreetsBlog:

If the American Dream of the Baby Boomers was all about being able to have a car and a house in suburbia, the new American Dream is having the choice between living in drivable suburban places and walkable urban ones.

This summer, CEOs for Cities released a study showing how the walkability of a neighborhood increased the value of homes in that neighborhood. In Charlotte, NC:

Controlling for all other factors including size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, age, neighborhood income levels, distance from the Central Business District and access to jobs, “if you were to pick up that house in Ashley Park, and place it in more walkable Wilmore, it would increase in value by $34,000 or 12 percent,” Cortright said.

But it is not an "either/or" challenge. Some important distinctions:

• According to Leinberger, "About the the same number of people want to live in a pedestrian-friendly environment as those who want to live in a drivable suburban one..." In other words, there are always many factors at play in the personal preferences of home buyers, but desire for walkability is playing an increasing role. It is not necessary that everyone be walking...but the trend appears to favor walking which is beginning to translate into measurable economic value.
• Most of the discussion so far has been about urban vs suburban--a distinction I find stereotypical and non-applicable in my New England town. Although we are only a dozen miles from the center of Boston, we have two "villages" separated by relatively rural spaces. It's not quite "farmland," but the town has set aside conservation land in a community that has evolved over several hundred years--limiting the amount of cul-de-sac sprawl. Getting across town on foot is currently impractical but within these villages, many amenities are accessible on foot. There is a great opportunity here.

We all know the potential advantages of living in an urban village, but most of us in towns and suburbs have weighed those advantages against much higher disadvantages which include the following perceptions:

• urban schools are unsafe and less integrated into the community
• urban living is more expensive
• parking is a nightmare and cars are still a necessity
• personal safety is a concern
• "anonymnity" is less desirable as we "settle down"
• most people still want "space"

I'm just listing those perceptions to illustrate, not to start a debate. Most people like where they live and it is an arrogant and presumptive mission to tell them they should change their attitudes. Instead, we should focus on the opportunities to get the best of both worlds.

We can transform our suburban towns into walkable communities, retaining the strengths and advantages of already desirable communities. When more residents can walk to amenities like shops, parks, schools and small local restaurants, the economic viability of these highly localized services will be strengthened. It does not mean "no more trips to WalMart," but perhaps a few more customers per week at Cafe Diva or Islington House of Pizza will prompt them to stay open longer or be able to hire another person. Perhaps the foot traffic to these places will result in a new customer walking into the "Ski Shop" or choosing to drop off dry cleaning at the Crown Cleaners instead of using a chain store. As activity increases, perhaps a new business will open...

Over time, one new customer at a time, we grow. While we grow, our children become healthier as they walk to school and our playgrounds, spending less time in front of video games and more time outdoors. We see our neighbors more often and the strength of our community grows. Isolated houses sit on the market for months while starter homes on 10,000 sf lots get multiple offers. It all feeds together into an economic and social revitalization that begins, literally, with a few steps...

Today is International Walk to School Day--but not for some communities where walking and biking have been banned. Two recent news stories are discouraging on many levels, but do not represent the norm as more and more communities are, in fact, adopting alternatives to driving.

• In Saratoga Springs, NY, a woman and her 12-year old son are defying school officials who, on the day before school started, advised all parents that "walking and biking to school would not be tolerated."
• In Marblehead, MA, the town's participation in today's event was cancelled while the school works out "issues related to program administration, safety, and liability."

These stories are "easy targets," for walkability advocates and that is my first complaint. The newspaper coverage of the New York story in particular follows the pattern that has become so typical of print-based media's clumsy attempt to remain relevant in an online world. Controversy-baiting stories leave little room for reasonable discourse as dozens of intemperate commentors react to the story that has set up the town for criticism without providing adequate context to explain why presumably reasonable adults in the community made decisions and now find themselves on the online hot seat. Online media (including this post of mine, to some extent) jump on the bandwagon as the Sarasota Springs story makes it to the Huffington Post, shows up in my LinkedIn Groups, and will undoubtably be a feature item in the many Pedestrian and Bike update email newsletters to which I subscribe.

Maybe the folks in Saratoga Springs ARE idiots, but I suspect there is much more to the story...the policy has been in place since 1994. The parents and administrators are probably focused on 100 other issues and it is unfair-based on the limited information reported-to leap to conspiracy and anti-progressive theories. But it is more fun to do that and it sells papers and generates online traffic. Meanwhile, the parents and community members probably feel angry and misunderstood, but dare not venture into the online argument of anonymous people who know nothing and judge everything.

In Marblehead, the local newspaper, the Marblehead Reporter, does a better job of providing context. Parents, administrators, and school officials are not characterized as opposing walking, but it seems the promotional effort "got ahead of itself." The town had recently experienced a tragedy when a high school sophmore was hit and killed by a motorist...then, a "Wellness Committee" coincidentally launched a promotion of Walk to School Wednesdays. School Board Chairman Dick Nohelty said that the program was not passed through the proper channels before launching.

The Marblehead story is a cautionary tale for walkability advocates about the importance of inclusion and consensus. These ideas--promoting walking and bike-riding--are not self-evident truths or causes "against" anyone. In fact Marblehead, like my town of Westwood, is fully signed-up for the Safe Routes to Schools program. School Superintendent Paul Dulac noted that he'd like to see that program "more integrated" before a walking campaign takes place.

It should not be controversial to organize a walk to school or choose to ride a bike. But anything involving the safety of children is an extremely touchy issue that, when it makes people uncomfortable for whatever reason, will prompt conservative reactions. I'm learning for our own committee, it is easy to make mistakes and to not include the right person, talk to people the right way, promote an idea prematurely, etc.--but I think it can be managed by maintaining a positive attitude and accepting criticism as a learning process. We can't lose sight of our overall goals as we navigate the details.

Update: a torrential downpour here has cancelled today's walk...so perhaps next week, I'll report on how this went.

I believe our most fundamental challenge is to restore a sense of community--a building and strengthening of the ties within our neighborhoods and between our communities, especially the neighboring towns where development is uncoordinated and often in opposition to the interests of the next town over. But what can any of us really do about that on a daily basis? It's not even really my problem--it's a theoretical observation, an explanation for some frustration about how our society can't seem to solve big problems like ensuring health care for all citizens or delivering accountability and integrity from our government.

So instead of dreaming up "macro solutions," perhaps we should consider some basic, day-to-day activities that permeate (or could permeate, with greater participation) civic life: walking and bicycling -- what many term "active transportation."

Boston has begun to improve the cycling infrastructure with new bike lanes, a bikeshare program, and bike commuting promotions like Bike Fridays. We should support, advocate, encourage, and educate about the benefits and practicality of cycling in the city with the dream of transforming participation into something like what the Netherlands experienced over the past 30 years. My ride in from Westwood is a physical way I feel more connected to the city, and I think the more people who share that kind of connection, the better.

For walking, we need to get out of our houses and apartments and onto the streets. Our kids need to feel safe walking to school. We should meet and know our neighbors. Walkable communities are not only safer, they are stronger--and the more people who share this experience, the more a sense of "connected place" will develop.

There are plenty of problems to solve and things to improve in our society, but where do we start? I think a sustained emphasis on encouraging and making safer these modes of active transportation could have systemic benefits to facilitate all other efforts while providing immediate improvements to our quality of life.