SIERRA CLUB AND SIMPLY LIVING CALL FOR RE-EXAMINATION OF TRANSPORTATION PRIORITIES

Diverse Coalition Seeks Transportation Choice; New Report Released

COLUMBUS-The Ohio Chapter of the Sierra Club and Simply Living, along with more than 200 diverse groups from around the nation, signed on as founding endorsers of the newly-formed Alliance for a New Transportation Charter, which calls for the need for changes in transportation decision-making to better meet community needs.

The Alliance includes health, environmental, business, social equity, and other groups that have agreed on a four-point Charter to improve communities through better transportation investments. The Charter calls for using transportation investments to enhance public health and safety; promote social equity and a better quality of life; sustain economic prosperity, and protect the environment while saving energy.

"Transportation systems do more than provide mobility: they affect everything from our waistlines to our wallets," said Shannon Harps, Transportation Policy Analyst with the Ohio Chapter of the Sierra Club. "Alliance members from developers to ministers agree that our transportation investments are not doing enough to meet these community goals."

Community groups are realizing that poor transportation investments can sap community vitality through long commutes that keep people from volunteering and by dividing neighborhoods with high-speed traffic. People who live on streets with high traffic know fewer of their neighbors than those on streets with less traffic.

"If you look around Central Ohio, you will see our transportation patterns so clearly define the landscape. In most cases, this landscape is a network of roads, highways, parking lots and fragmented communities where walking and bicycling are dangerous and access to mass transit is minimal," noted Eric Davies, a member of the organization Simply Living and a transit advocate.

The Surface Transportation Policy Project released a new report in conjunction with the introduction of the Alliance. Ten Years of Progress: Building Better Communities Through Transportation profiles more than 70 innovative transportation projects around the country. It provides a summary of national statistics documenting how transportation has changed since passage of the landmark federal transportation law ten years ago. The report also documents polls indicating that transportation reform has become mainstream.

The full text of the New Transportation Charter, and a list of endorsers so far, can be found at www.transact.org. The 48-page, full-color Ten Years of Progress report is available through STPP, at (202) 466-2636. An indexed version can be found at STPP's website, www.transact.org.

The Sierra Club is one of the nation's oldest and largest environmental organizations with over 700,000 members nationwide. The Ohio Chapter, chartered in 1968, has 18,000 members. The Sierra Club has been a leader in an effort to promote more livable communities that provide people with a variety of safe transportation choices.

Simply Living is a Central Ohio membership organization dedicated to greening the earth, simplifying our lives and healing toward wholeness. Simply Living offers sustainable lifestyle education through its Eastern Heartland Earth Institute courses, learning groups and its bookstore and resource center at the Clintonville Community Market.

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