Active transportation consists of walking, cycling, and scooting, using either personally owned or shared bicycle and scooter schemes and can be a person’s sole mode of transport or part of an overall transit strategy. Understanding how to encourage active transportation is particularly essential to help solve the “First Mile/Last Mile problem” that often affects public transit users whose bus or train stop are a distance from their home or destination.
With sedentary lifestyles as an important predictor of poor health, active transportation can greatly increase physical activity. Transportation and urban planners can promote active forms of transportation by building safe infrastructure for walking and biking and reducing the distance between everyday destinations, like shops, schools, and other services. Improvements to public transportation that increase ridership also contribute to higher levels of physical activity as users are likely to walk to or from stops and stations, as well as make other trips by foot during their day. Likewise, a reduction in vehicle trips – shifting to transit, walking, or biking – reduces harmful air pollution.
Active Transportation Across California
The California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) and Caltrans Transportation Equity Index Tool (EQI) details Active Transportation inequities in the Access To Destination dataset. The dataset can be used to highlight communities that have the greatest gaps in multimodal access to destinations.
To improve Active Transportation within the state, the Active Transportation Program was created by Senate Bill 99 and Assembly Bill 101 to encourage increased use of active modes of transportation, such as walking and biking.
The goals of the ATP include, but are not limited to, increasing the proportion of trips accomplished by walking and biking, increasing the safety and mobility of non-motorized users, advancing efforts of regional agencies to achieve greenhouse gas reduction goals, enhancing public health, and providing a broad spectrum of projects to benefit many types of users including disadvantaged communities. The ATP is administered by the Division of Local Assistance, Office of Active Transportation, and Special Programs and is currently on its sixth cycle of funding, with a seventh cycle open to applications.
External Resources
CalTrans Transportation Equity Index
The Transportation Equity Index (EQI) is a spatial screening tool designed to identify transportation-based priority populations at the Census block level. The EQI integrates transportation and socioeconomic indicators into three screens. All screens reflect low-income status and Tribal land status.
The Active Transportation Resource Center
The Active Transportation Resource Center's (ATRC) mission is to provide resources, technical assistance, and training to transportation partners across California to increase opportunity for the success of active transportation projects.