Great to see Luke Brocki’s coverage of cycling in B.C. Business (less ppreaching to the converted). He reports on the Cycling Action Forum held at TransLink a few days ago:
Health officers, planners and city officials gather to discuss the health benefits of cycling and their economic impact
The forum heard that studies suggesting cycling saves more lives as a result of increased physical activity than it ends—via increased traffic crashes—have been around since the early 1990s, that more recent European research has measured financial pros and cons, and that the World Health Organization has created a free online assessment tool planners can use alongside traffic counts and injury data to estimate the economic impact of cycling in their jurisdictions.
When Dr. Meghan Winters, assistant professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University, used the tool to crunch some numbers for Toronto Public Health last year, she found that city’s cycling levels prevented 49 deaths per year, representing between $54 and $200 million in health care benefits.
UPDATE: From the Buzzer blog – The second annual Metro Vancouver Cycling Action Forum
