Healthy mobility

Sustainable mobility is healthy mobility. Cycling and walking cause no air pollutants and are a welcome form of exercise. Governments and local authorities could win people over to sustainable mobility by stressing the health factor. Some already integrate health into their mobility policies.

Sigurđur Ingi Friđleifsson, manager of ORKUSETUR / Energy Agency Iceland, and Lynn Sproat, transport and access co-ordinator for the National Health Service (NHS) Ayrshire and Arran in Scotland, talk about fruitful combinations of health and mobility in their countries.

Calculator
“Every year in Iceland there is a successful competition between companies and institutions called ‘Bike to work’,” says Friđleifsson. “To support that, the Energy Agency Iceland created a calculator that tells you how much money and CO2 emission you save by leaving your car at home and bike or walk to work.” The calculator is easy to use: simply select your car and type and fill in the price of the fuel your car uses.

“To make it even more interesting I added a calorie counter that tells you roughly how many calories you burn,” Friđleifsson adds.

“Because the assumptions behind the calculator go for every country it would be easy to translate the calculator to English,” he suggests. No need to invent the same tool twice. Try the calculator here (in Icelandic, but easy to figure out. See word list below.)

Naked cycling
The Islandic competition sounds a lot like the annual American and Canadian ‘Bike-to-Work Day’, every third Friday of May. By organising this day, bicycle advocacy groups try to encourage commuters to travel to work by bike.

There are similar initiatives elsewhere to attract attention to how healthy green transport can be. A more provocative form is the annual World Naked Bike Ride, this year to be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands on June 7th.

Policy
But whereas the American Bike-to-Work Day is an initiative of private parties, in more and more European countries cycling and walking promotion are becoming government policy.

The British Department for Transport, for instance, has embraced several strategies to promote cycling as an alternative form of transport for local journeys. There is ‘ Walking and Cycling: an action plan’, which, according to the department’s website “sets out measures from across government to increase levels of active travel by creating places that people want to walk and cycle in.”

Furthermore, “[t]he Department set up Cycling England in March 2005 to co-ordinate increases in cycling accross the country.” Why not place the calorie, CO2 and money calculator on Cycling England’s web page?

Scotland
Lynn Sproat tells us about the West of Scotland Regional Access to Health project. This initiative tries to promote active travel modes – walking and cycling – and the use of public transport (apart from improving transport and access to healthcare facilities). Not just clients or patients are encouraged to become more active, but staff as well.

Says Ms. Sproat: “Here in Ayrshire we have embarked on a series of travel plans for our facilities and we are introducing a number of staff green travel benefits to encourage staff to consider other forms of travel rather than the car. These include: an online car sharing scheme, tax free bus travel to work and a cycle to work scheme. These will shortly be open to staff.”

This fits into a ‘practice what you preach approach’: if you want patients to become more active, start green commuting yourselves.