Calvin P. Tribby

Transit Use, Physical Activity, and Body Mass Index Changes: Objective Measures Associated With Complete Street Light-Rail Construction

OBJECTIVES We assessed effects on physical activity (PA) and weight among participants in a complete street intervention that extended a light-rail line in Salt Lake City, Utah. METHODS Participants in the Moving Across Places Study resided within 2 kilometers of the new line. They wore accelerometers and global positioning system (GPS) loggers for 1 week before and after rail construction. Regression analyses compared change scores of participants who never rode transit with continuing, former, and new riders, after adjustment for control variables (total n = 537). RESULTS New riders had significantly more accelerometer-measured counts per minute than never-riders (P < .01), and former riders had significantly fewer (P < .01). New riders lost (P < .05) and former riders gained (P < .01) weight. Former riders lost 6.4 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) per 10 hours of accelerometer wear (P < .01) and gained 16.4 minutes of sedentary time (P < .01). New riders gained 4.2 MVPA minutes (P < .05) and lost 12.8 (P < .05) sedentary minutes per 10 hours accelerometer wear. CONCLUSIONS In light of the health benefits of transit ridership in the complete street area, research should address how to encourage more sustained ridership.

Adding maps (GPS) to accelerometry data to improve study participants’ recall of physical activity: a methodological advance in physical activity research

Objective Obtaining the ‘when, where and why’ of healthy bouts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) provides insights into natural PA. Design In Salt Lake City, Utah, adults wore accelerometer and Global Positioning System (GPS) loggers for a week in a cross-sectional study to establish baseline travel and activity patterns near a planned Complete Street intervention involving a new rail line, new sidewalks and a bike path. Results At the end of the week, research assistants met with the 918 participants who had at least three 10 h days of good accelerometer readings. Accelerometer and GPS data were uploaded and integrated within a custom application, and participants were provided with maps and time information for past MVPA bouts of ≥3 min to help them recall bout details. Participants said that ‘getting someplace’ was, on average, a more important motivation for their bouts than leisure or exercise. A series of recall tests showed that participants recalled most bouts they were asked about, regardless of the duration of the bout, suggesting that participant perceptions of their shorter lifestyle bouts can be studied with this methodology. Visual prompting with a map depicting where each bout took place yielded more accurate recall than prompting with time cues alone. Conclusions These techniques provide a novel way to understand participant memories of the context and subjective assessments associated with healthy bouts of PA. Prompts with time-stamped maps that illustrate places of MVPA offer an effective method to improve understanding of activity and its supportive sociophysical contexts.

A Complete Street Intervention for Walking to Transit, Nontransit Walking, and Bicycling: A Quasi-Experimental Demonstration of Increased Use.

BACKGROUND Complete streets require evaluation to determine if they encourage active transportation. METHODS Data were collected before and after a street intervention provided new light rail, bike lanes, and better sidewalks in Salt Lake City, Utah. Residents living near (<800 m) and far (≥801 to 2000 m) from the street were compared, with sensitivity tests for alternative definitions of near (<600 and <1000 m). Dependent variables were accelerometer/global positioning system (GPS) measures of transit trips, nontransit walking trips, and biking trips that included the complete street corridor. RESULTS Active travel trips for Near-Time 2 residents, the group hypothesized to be the most active, were compared with the other 3 groups (Near-Time 1, Far-Time 1, and Far-Time 2), net of control variables. Near-Time 2 residents were more likely to engage in complete street transit walking trips (35%, adjusted) and nontransit walking trips (50%) than the other 3 groups (24% to 25% and 13% to 36%, respectively). Bicycling was less prevalent, with only 1 of 3 contrasts significant (10% of Near-Time 2 residents had complete street bicycle trips compared with 5% of Far-Time 1 residents). CONCLUSIONS Living near the complete street intervention supported more pedestrian use and possibly bicycling, suggesting complete streets are also public health interventions.

Analyzing walking route choice through built environments using random forests and discrete choice techniques

Walking is a form of active transportation with numerous benefits, including better health outcomes, lower environmental impacts and stronger communities. Understanding built environmental associations with walking behavior is a key step towards identifying design features that support walking. Human mobility data available through GPS receivers and cell phones, combined with high resolution walkability data, provide a rich source of georeferenced data for analyzing environmental associations with walking behavior. However, traditional techniques such as route choice models have difficulty with highly dimensioned data. This paper develops a novel combination of a data-driven technique with route choice modeling for leveraging walkability audits. Using data from a study in Salt Lake City, UT, USA, we apply the data-driven technique of random forests to select variables for use in walking route choice models. We estimate data-driven route choice models and theory-driven models based on predefined walkability dimensions. Results indicate that the random forest technique selects variables that dramatically improve goodness of fit of walking route choice models relative to models based on predefined walkability dimensions. We compare the theory-driven and data-driven walking route choice models based on interpretability and policy relevance.

Geographic regions for assessing built environmental correlates with walking trips: A comparison using different metrics and model designs

Abstract There is growing international evidence that supportive built environments encourage active travel such as walking. An unsettled question is the role of geographic regions for analyzing the relationship between the built environment and active travel. This paper examines the geographic region question by assessing walking trip models that use two different regions: walking activity spaces and self‐defined neighborhoods. We also use two types of built environment metrics, perceived and audit data, and two types of study design, cross‐sectional and longitudinal, to assess these regions. We find that the built environment associations with walking are dependent on the type of metric and the type of model. Audit measures summarized within walking activity spaces better explain walking trips compared to audit measures within self‐defined neighborhoods. Perceived measures summarized within self‐defined neighborhoods have mixed results. Finally, results differ based on study design. This suggests that results may not be comparable among different regions, metrics and designs; researchers need to consider carefully these choices when assessing active travel correlates. HighlightsWe assess walking with audit and perceived built environment measures.Spatial measures are walking activity spaces and self‐defined neighborhoods.Findings indicate that environmental measures have preferred spatial extents.Researchers need to consider varying spatial measures to assess walking correlates.

Street use and design: daily rhythms on four streets that differ in rated walkability

ABSTRACT Few studies have correlated counts of street users to walkability features or tested for temporal variations in use across the day. Trained observers counted street users for four streets that differed in walkability according to the Irvine-Minnesota audit. From 7 am to 7 pm weekdays, across four 2-hour observation periods, all four streets had significant quadratic trends of increasing then decreasing use. Furthermore, the two most walkable streets also showed significant linear increases in users across the day. Part of a street’s identity is its temporal activity rhythm, and both walkability and rhythms can inform urban design and renewal.