Sustainability Spotlight, Oct 2021 - Active Commuting in Scotland: Co-Benefits of Green Travel
The Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) is a partnership between the NHS, Glasgow City Council and the University, and has a keen interest in providing a scientific basis for understanding how to support active travel, particularly its co-benefits to the health and well-being of people. In July 2021, they published a new research paper, Quantifying the health and economic benefits of active commuting in Scotland1. There's a summary here on their website, as well as a single link to all their active sustainable travel research.
The researchers used data from the 2001 and 2011 Censuses to estimate how many people who walk or cycle to work or study in Scotland were able to achieve the daily physical activity recommendation of 30 minutes of moderate physical activity through their commuting journey. They also estimated the health economic value of this active commuting in Scotland.
"Despite the relatively low levels of active commuting in Scotland, in 2011 it was estimated that close to 200 deaths a year could be prevented through current levels of active commuting. The annual health economic benefit of active commuting in Scotland was over £671 million in 2011." -- Baker et al.
According to Bruce Whyte, University of Glasgow Institute of Health and Wellbeing's Public Health Programme Manager, Co-Leader of the GCPH Obervatory Function, and paper co-author:
"Active commuting not only benefits health, but contributes to lowering carbon emissions, reducing air pollution and creating healthier more attractive communities. Sustained increased investment in active travel infrastructure and behaviour change is needed to grow active travel and active commuting across Scotland from a relatively low base." -- GCPH website article.
1 Graham Baker, Rebecca Pillinger, Paul Kelly, Bruce Whyte. Quantifying the health and economic benefits of active commuting in Scotland. In: Journal of Transport & Health, Volume 22, 2021, ISSN 2214-1405, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2021.101111.
Image credit: © Bruce Whyte, used with permission. Photograph of a Glasgow street with a cycle lane alongside green trees.