Newton Trails

Riding with two friends Sunday afternoon on the final leg of the Covington Community Bike Ride, we were chatting about public health, the role of trails in providing a response to the growing American obesity epidemic, and the difficulty of getting folks to see the connection.  "Personal health is a choice," one said.

And, that started me thinking.  (I do actually do that from time to time, despite what some might say.)  Just what kind of choice are we really giving people?

Since 2009, Newton County has added 33 acres of recreation space.  We've built 1.2 miles of paved trails in Oxford (largely with private funds and investment by the city and college).  Oh, and we've added some 40,000 people in the past decade!  We fall farther behind every day, while our county lags at the bottom in most public health measures, in a state that is near the bottom nationally.

Meanwhile, we've gone from one McDonalds to five -- soon to be six.  My parents live in Dunwoody, and they have to drive several miles or more to find most fast food restaurants.  We can find multiples of most chains within walking distance.  Not that walking is an option, mind you, with US-278, the Covington By-Pass, Washington Street, Brown Bridge Rd, Salem Rd, GA-36, and GA-212 all presenting quite formidable barriers to travel by foot or by bike.  Sure, people can choose, but the combination of fast food proliferation and streets designed for auto-only travel determines what the realistic choices are.

Recently, a Cobb County woman was prosecuted for vehicular manslaughter -- even though she didn't own and could not drive a car!   She was prosecuted and convicted by a jury because she chose to cross a busy five-lane highway with her three kids, rather than walking an extra 6/10ths of a mile at sundown to get home to her apartment complex just across the street from the bus stop.  When her youngest broke away and was struck and killed by a driver with prior hit and run convictions, who confessed to drinking and taking painkillers that day, the mother was prosecuted.  Her choice, right?

These are the kinds of choices we give pedestrians and bicyclists every day.  We engineer our roads to be dangerous by design.  We place unhealthy food choices on every corner.  And, we treat funding for safe walking and biking like it's a precious commodity of which the public is just not worthy.  Healthy living is a choice, you know.  Kind of like dissidents  speaking out in China, or women's rights advocates speaking out in Iraq or Iran...  It's a choice.  A sad an unnecessary choice.