Frank et al. (2004) report that obesity around Atlanta, as measured by body mass index (BMI), is associated positively with time spent in cars and negatively with mixed land-use (such as incorporating Light Rail transit) and with walking.
[4] As such costs and benefits are being weighed it is also essential to recognize the potentially negative health impacts, including injury hazards that accompany light rail.
From an air quality standpoint, biking to stations at the start or end of a workday trip eliminates "cold‐start" vehicle emissions associated with driving to a park and ride.
Some negative consequences are increases in noise level, loss of wetlands, adverse impacts to historic sites, gentrification, and risk of displacement.
[6] A 2011 study done by Human Impact Partners in Minnesota showed that light rail and RTD expansion in their communities had at least one if not all of these negative outcomes: higher rate of residential and business displacement, increase in housing values causing fewer vacancies and a decrease in affordable housing, and displacement of existing residents—especially low income residents.
Driver's actions such as disobedience to traffic rules and signs, as well as failure to perceive due to poor stimulus observability are factors of hazard causation.
While public transportation is a necessary component of improving health of individuals of low socioeconomic status, policies must be changed to make the benefits equal with the challenges.
RTD would be wise to look to Minnesota to find how their Transit Oriented Development addressed the economic and public health needs of the communities affected by the placement of light rail.
[7] For example, using restorative investment to ensure that low socioeconomic communities are not unduly burdened and pushed aside as light rail tends to gentrify neighborhoods beyond the reach of the poor; opening access to opportunity by rethinking zoning policies, de-concentrating subsidized housing, re-thinking school boundaries; and growing a community together to ensure there are healthy environments for all –not just those who are passing through on light rail or moving to newly renovated areas.
RTD has conducted a Quality of Life (QoL) study for the neighborhoods' impacted by FasTracks with baseline data collection starting in 2006 and continuing bi-annually to the present.
Integrating such measures into the QoL study would be an appropriate and timely indication of RTD and FasTracks' stated commitment to improving public health.