Public Health and Travel Behavior

Public health, as a major factor influencing the livability and well-being of a community has been a subject of interest in many academic fields including Transportation science. It is postulated that public health has potential associations with various travel related factors such as Travel Behavior. Travel Behavior could indirectly impact public health by influencing various personal and community level quality of life indicators such as physical activity and Air pollution respectively. Various aspects of Travel Behavior such as mode choice, route choice, trip generation, trip sequence and scheduling are affected by built environment, soiodemographic and trip features. Some of these features that are displayed in Figure 1 include Urban Form, Land Use, Transportation System like transit accessibility, quality and frequency of service, and trip purpose and duration. These features directly influence travel behavior; while, travel behavior would directly impact Air pollutions, physical activity, traffic, comfort/safety of travel and Noise pollution. These quality of life indicators are believed to have some level of association with public health status. Therefore, consistent in-depth research on different aspects of travel behavior and how each aspect is related to public and individual health indicators are highly suggested by travel and health specialists.