There is no denying that we at KineticShift love our bicycles. While not everyone on our staff is a regular bike rider, even those that don’t do the two wheel thing admit it has many benefits. And according to a study just published in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives cutting out short auto trips and replacing them with mass transit and active transport would yield major health benefits, but also save about $3.8 billion per year from avoided mortality and reduced health care costs for conditions like obesity and heart disease.
The report calculated that these measures would save an estimated $7 billion, including 1,100 lives each year from improved air quality and increased physical fitness.
“We talk about the cost of changing energy systems, the cost of alternative fuels, but we seldom talk about this kind of benefit,” says Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Continue reading Study: Cycling Offers Economic as Well as Health Benefits