Thriving Communities and Transportation

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Thriving Communities and Abundant Transportation

Building communities in which people can live, learn, work, and play in safety and where people of all ages, abilities, and incomes can move about their lives with freedom.

It is essential for people’s health and dignity that they live in safe communities where people of all ages, abilities, and incomes can move about their lives with freedom.

Such communities not only allow people to thrive physically, mentally, and financially, they are essential to slowing climate change, as transportation causes 27% of Wisconsin’s greenhouse emissions. Building communities where people can live close to where they work, shop, learn, and play means they have the freedom to choose how they get around regardless of age, race, income, or ability. It means safe, active transportation (walking, biking, and other human powered means) being an option for anyone to get anywhere. It means frequent, quality, affordable mass transit that gets people where they need to go. People in rural areas who cannot drive must have access to affordable clean transportation options. For areas in which vehicles are needed, electrification can minimize air and noise pollution.

Our current transportation paradigm pushes people to overly rely on individual vehicles, polluting our air, risking pedestrian lives, and wasting people’s precious time and money.

From the moment of conception to their last breath, Wisconsinites are made sick when we power our transportation with fossil fuels. Particulates and other pollutants from fossil fuels pass through our lungs into our blood, brains, and even cross the placenta. Air pollution from fossil fuels has been shown to cause preterm births, stillbirths, delayed cognitive development in children, asthma, heart attacks, COPD, cancer, strokes, and dementia. Meanwhile, many low income and BIPOC people can't afford personal vehicles, and yet due to racist redlining, they are the ones who breathe most of the pollution from cars. Worse yet, we underinvest in active and mass transit to provide communities with safe ways to get about their lives.

Walking, biking, public transit, and electric vehicle (EV) ownership can reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 30%, decrease annual NOx by 13%, and PM 2.5 concentrations by 19%.

Giving people the freedom to shift from driving to active modes of travel like walking, biking, and public transit cleans up our air, gives people access to essential services, and gets people much needed exercise to prevent chronic diseases, all of which profoundly benefit our health.

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Well-designed communities and abundant and safe biking/walking paths provide greater autonomy to the young, the elderly, and those with disabilities. 31% of Wisconsinites do not drive a car. That’s nearly a third of our neighbors who may have limited access to their surrounding communities. Limited mobility like this can significantly impact daily life, making it challenging to reach essential locations, healthcare services, and engage in social activities.

In addition to better air quality, the physical activity associated with walking, biking, and public transit, would make Wisconsinites physically and mentally healthier. Walking on a regular basis has been shown to reduce the risk of age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes, and cancer. Walking has also been shown to improve pain management, musculoskeletal disorders, and sleep quality. And bicycling, as well as walking, has been shown to improve mental health by reducing stress and improving overall life satisfaction.

For people to have the freedom to move about their lives, we must make it easy for people to live close to where they work, shop, learn, and play.

This means focusing on smart growth, or mixed-use development, that opens up options for housing and businesses close to active and mass transit infrastructure. Building close-knit neighborhoods with housing options of all sizes is essential to address not just homelessness, but the crisis of home affordability which is affecting people of all income levels. Furthermore, allowing dense development in towns is the most important way to preserve farms and wildlands on the edges of town, as it decreases pressure to sprawl. Density can be green, beautiful, and healthy.

When we design our towns and cities in a way that prioritizes humans, it saves people time and money. Communities with mixed-used transit oriented development save people $9,000 annually in decreased vehicle-related costs. They also save people time in their commutes. People are happier because they can use this ‘found time’ to socialize, recreate, exercise or do any of the many things which are preferable to sitting in a car.

Highways divide the urban communities they pass through and pollute those places without decreasing traffic or commute times.

Expanding highways and roadways divides communities, hurts businesses, and increases noise, heat, and water pollution for nearby residents while doing little to alleviate traffic or commute times. Historically, highways and interstates were often built directly through marginalized communities, paving over Black homes and businesses, leading to destruction and division. This displacement not only fractured social and economic networks but also introduced new forms of pollution. Major thoroughfares in urban communities increase noise pollution from constant traffic, worsen urban heat islands due to expansive concrete surfaces, and increase flood risks and water pollution from road runoff and poor drainage systems. But we now know that adding lanes or new roadways actually makes people drive more and doesn’t reduce traffic, through a phenomenon known as induced demand. We can use thoughtful urban design to create systems so people can enter and cross cities quickly and yet maintain the integrity and vibrancy of the communities within those cities.

Rural communities need mass transit too.

All people have the right to transportation. Many people in rural communities cannot participate in society or adequately meet their daily and healthcare needs due to either the cost of individual vehicle transportation, or because their health makes them unsafe to drive. In many aging communities, transportation was the primary barrier preventing people from staying in their homes. Rural communities need well-funded, affordable, frequent, and flexible public transit options.

It is essential for our health and the stability of our climate that we electrify all possible forms of transportation.

In addition to being thoughtful about how we design our communities and transportation systems, we must make sure the vehicles we use are clean. Internal combustion (ICE) vehicles are inefficient, dirty, expensive, and unreliable relative to electric vehicles. EV’s are more than twice as efficient as ICE vehicles, they have much lower carbon emissions, they are cleaner, they decrease mining relative to ICE vehicles, and they are cheaper to own and operate. It is particularly important that we electrify medium and heavy duty diesel vehicles, which are disproportionately polluting. Firstly, that means our school districts must electrify our school buses, so kids don’t have to breathe dangerous, carcinogenic diesel pollution on their way to learn. Similarly, because a lot of cargo shipping is located near densely populated low-income communities, it’s important to electrify shipping vehicles.

With the right policies, we can build communities where people can live, learn, work, and play in safety and where people of all ages, abilities, and incomes can move about their lives with freedom.

Public Health Action Guide on Transportation

The choice is ours

No matter the color of our skin, the amount of money we make, or the neighborhood we live in, we all want a future where we, our children, and our communities are thriving, where we have abundant time in beautiful places with the people we care about. We deserve to be able to get where we need to go quickly while actually enjoying the trip. Imagine being able to walk or bike on a beautiful path to work or the local grocery store, and having that be the quickest way to get there, or being able to step on a clean and quiet bus that comes every 5 minutes and takes you right where you need to go without planning. Imagine being able to live close to the people you love, being able to spend time with them instead of being stuck in traffic. We are kept from that future when big oil divides us by race and place, keeping us isolated in our cars. But the future we want is within our grasp if we join together. We can have safe, fair neighborhoods and enjoyable ways to get to the places and people we love most – the choice is ours to make. Join us in building that world together.

-We Make the Future

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