A Comfort Evaluation Exercise
Channel: Active Towns
Date: 2020-09-29

In this video, I document and evaluate the comfort level of my often 2-3 times weekly grocery shopping ride to my local Whole Foods Market, which also happens to be the World HQ location for the company here in Austin, TX. This project was prompted for the DTV Dutch - Bicycle Infrastructure Design Principles online class. 

The Results: Overall, it is quite a comfortable ride from a North American perspective.

Two main areas of improvement would be:
1.) For the Shared Street Segments: More traffic calming elements and street design features that make it clear that these spaces are shared by people walking, biking, and yes, driving motor vehicles.
2) For the Major Intersection Crossings: Slowing down motor vehicles approaching the intersections, providing safer crossing facilities, and priority to people walking and biking

For information on the Dutch - Bicycle Infrastructure Design Principles online class visit: http://bit.ly/DutchCyclingDTVClass

Note: We are fortunate in that we do have a couple of hyper-local corner store type markets in the neighborhood that we can and do frequently walk to, but the "longer" trip to Whole Foods is worth the modest effort to gain access to a wider selection of fresh produce. 

Music: Wandering by Marshall Usinger and Virgo by Mikael Manvelyan both via https://www.storyblocks.com/

All video and audio production by me, John Simmerman

My Personal Call To Action: 
- If you enjoyed this video please give it a "thumbs up", leave a comment, and share it with a friend.
- And if you haven't done so yet already, please subscribe to the Channel and don't forget to "Ring" that notifications bell; this lets you know when I post a new video or schedule a premiere.
- Please consider supporting my efforts by becoming a Patron via Patreon. More info here: https://www.patreon.com/activetowns

For more information about Active Towns effort or to follow along please visit our links below:
Website: https://www.activetowns.org/
Podcast: https://www.activetowns.org/podcast/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ActiveTowns/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/activetowns/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ActiveTowns
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/SubscribeActiveTownsNewsletter

Background: Hi Everyone, my name is John Simmerman. I’m a health promotion professional with over 30 years of experience and my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization of how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.

In 2012 I launched the non-profit Advocates for Healthy Communities as an effort to help promote and create healthy, active places. 

Since that time I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be, in order to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities".

This is my personal Active Towns Channel and it features my original video content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.

Thanks for tuning in, I hope you find this content helpful.

Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2022

Advocates for Healthy Communities, Inc. is a nonprofit 501c3 organization (EIN 45-3802508) dedicated to helping communities create a Culture of Activity. Any donations collected are used specifically to support the organization's mission.

To make a donation to Advocates for Healthy Communities go here: https://bit.ly/a4hc-donate

#cargobikes #dutchcycling #allagesandabilities #cultureofactivity #sharedstreets #streetsareforpeople #bicycles