What Active Transport Means for Health and Emissions
Launch library · evergreen read
Active transport describes any form of travel powered by the traveller's own body, most commonly walking and cycling, as distinct from transport that relies on an engine or motor of any kind to move a person from one place to another across a city or town.
Because active transport produces no exhaust emissions at all, replacing even a modest share of short car trips with walking or cycling can meaningfully reduce local vehicle emissions, particularly for the kind of short journeys that make up a large proportion of trips in many cities and suburban areas generally.
The health case runs alongside the emissions case rather than separately from it, since regular walking and cycling built into daily routine, rather than treated as separate exercise, offers a genuinely practical way to build physical activity into an otherwise sedentary day without requiring extra time to be set aside specifically for that purpose alone.