Skip to main content Skip to site navigation
Close
Get Healthy San Mateo County
Building Healthy, Equitable Communities
Building Healthy, Equitable Communities
Menu

Healthy Transportation

Overview

Healthy Transportation

Streets are an enormous public asset. Increasing opportunities for people to get out of their cars and safely walk, bike, and take public transit saves lives, prevents injuries, and improves health.

  • Safe places to walk and bike increases everyday physical activity, and is the leading strategy for preventing overweight and obesity as well as diabetes and heart disease.
  • When people drive less, air pollution declines and asthma and other health issues decrease — while slowing the negative effects of climate change.
  • Safe outdoor spaces for people to gather help build strong social connections, relieve stress, and help people recover more quickly from illness.
  • More people are injured or killed in cars than by walking or biking. The more we can get out of our cars, the safer and healthier all of us can be.
Post

Creating Safer Streets Near Schools
Prioritizing Health in Transportation (2018)

Traffic collisions are a public health priority given the related injuries and fatalities that follow, particularly impacting the most vulnerable road users: people walking and biking. Nearly 50% of students who live within a quarter-mile of their schools walk and bike to campus. One in four people walking or biking involved in a collision was under the age of 18. Get Healthy SMC analyzed collisions within a quarter mile of public elementary schools, taking a particular look at high poverty areas which experience elevated health inequities.

Post

Building Complete Streets

We have built roads and neighborhoods in such a way that we have engineered physical activity out of our lives. In many places, it is dangerous to walk across the street or for a child to walk or bike to school.

Changing the way we get around our communities can seem overwhelming, and changes in transportation happen slowly. But the potential is great. Policies that prioritize health through public transportation today will create long-term changes for generations of San Mateo County children, adults, and seniors.

Post

Putting People First When Designing Streets

​It is up to all of us to ensure our streets are safe for everyone who uses them, whether someone is in a car or bus, or on a bike or sidewalk. 

When we build roads, we don’t build one road for new drivers and a separate road for experienced drivers. When creating sidewalks and bike lanes, we need to make sure that we’re building them for all people, not just for experienced cyclists and physically fit pedestrians.

General information

Making it Easy to Stay Active

Walking or bicycling to work, school or the grocery store is the easiest way to increase physical activity and stay healthy. This is called active transportation.

Neighborhoods have been built in such a way that physical activity has been engineered out of our lives. In many places, it is dangerous to walk across the street or for a child to walk or bike to school. 

Before people can choose to use active transportation, our environments must be safer to walk, bike, or use public transit. Public transit is also active transportation because most public transportation trips start or end with a walk or bike ride.

Post Safe Routes to School

Increasing Safe Routes to School and Transit

There are many different ways to get around to the places we want to go. Whether traveling to schools, a park, bus stop, or train station, people can use a scooter, wheelchair, bus, train, bike. 

Safe Routes to School (SR2S) is a national and local program dedicated to increasing the number of children walking and biking to school.