(If you’re otherwise unhealthy and this is the only exercise you’d give yourself, you may still be better off. If you can make yourself do other exercise, please do.)
And if you thought you’d get away with walking by staying mostly not alongside traffic:
Table 2: estimated casualty risk, relative to crossing a street
Travel mode Distance travelled for casualty risk equivalent
to one road crossing
Walking alongside traffic, UK 160 metres
All walking, UK 210 metres
Road vehicle passenger, Australia 6,300 metres
Here in Tampa Bay, my commute by car usually takes about 25 minutes. Google says that, by bus, it would take around 2 hours. Commute time has a huge effect on quality of life. So, I probably wouldn’t gain and quality-adjusted life years by switching to bus.
I also noticed when I was managing large numbers of people that people who used public transportation seemed to get a lot more (~double) the number of illnesses. When they bought a car, their sickness rates went down.
I found the same thing myself when I switched.
However as this is a politically fraught topic, good studies seem to be scarce.
If you’re travelling a fixed distance, be very wary of cycling (and walking).
Some numbers:
Source: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/promising/wp5final.pdf which quotes Transport Statistics Great Britain 1979-1989
(If you’re otherwise unhealthy and this is the only exercise you’d give yourself, you may still be better off. If you can make yourself do other exercise, please do.)
And if you thought you’d get away with walking by staying mostly not alongside traffic:
Source: http://grapevine.net.au/~mccluskeyarundell/Ped_casualty.pdf
The scale of the benefits of buses is pretty dramatic.Based on that it seems rational to take buses whenever possible (unless I’m missing something).
Here in Tampa Bay, my commute by car usually takes about 25 minutes. Google says that, by bus, it would take around 2 hours. Commute time has a huge effect on quality of life. So, I probably wouldn’t gain and quality-adjusted life years by switching to bus.
I also noticed when I was managing large numbers of people that people who used public transportation seemed to get a lot more (~double) the number of illnesses. When they bought a car, their sickness rates went down.
I found the same thing myself when I switched.
However as this is a politically fraught topic, good studies seem to be scarce.
It’d be great to get same data, but without highway fatalities at long trips.