One of the everyday tasks in the life of a college student is traveling to and from their classes and traveling from place to place while on a college campus. Or at least these things used to be everyday tasks, until we were faced with a global pandemic that influenced all aspects of life and made our old daily norm a thing of the past. Aside from that, alternative methods of transportation in Bloomington have helped with reducing gas emissions and allowing cleaner air in our city. Air pollution negatively impacts human health because it can put us at risk for heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory disease. (5) Over long periods of time, exposure to air pollutants can also cause long-term negative effects on our nerves, brain, kidney, liver, and other important organs. (5) Exposure to pollutants that negatively affect our lung health is a more serious issue right now since we are all being faced with a virus that targets the respiratory system. Specifically, the virus attacks the epithelial cells that line the respiratory tract which can result in significant alveolar damage in the body (2). It is important that we continue to think about the environmental impact on our health, especially in these unknown and scary times.
Alternative methods of transportation in Bloomington include but are not limited to walking, biking, electronic scooters, the campus Bus, Bloomington Transit, carpooling, and Zipcars. (6) All of these methods are better for the environment and human health compared to every individual using their own automobile to travel to every place they go to. This post will focus more on my qualitative data I have collected from online, credible sources. My next post will focus more on quantitative data and data that I have collected myself through surveys and an interview. The survey includes questions regarding choice of transportation on campus and how coronavirus has affected public transportation.
Bloomington does an excellent job of providing alternative methods of transportation and providing students and residents with resources that allow us to utilize these methods efficiently. For example, students are provided with applications that help navigate them to alternative forms of transportation such as DoubleMap, which tells them the location of buses, and a Bike Racks Parking Map, which tells them the location of where they can rack their bikes when they go to class. (6) Additionally, parking on campus is so expensive and unreadily available that students are for the most part pushed to find alternative ways to travel around campus. I am speaking on this from personal experience and from anecdotes from my peers who I know have been upset by the lack of parking available in Bloomington.
Maps of campus are also provided so that students are able to make their way around campus, but with other applications available on our phones these maps are not readily necessary. Walking is a very realistic method because campus is relatively compact and popular restaurants and residential areas are within walking distance. Biking and walking are beneficial for the environmental health because they don’t release any pollutants into the air, and studies show that people who choose to walk or bike inhale less air pollutants than those who are driving a car. (4) These forms of transportation are also beneficial for mental health of humans because individuals who spend more time with light exercise outdoors score higher on executive function and mental health than others who don’t (4). Public transportation is a great alternative option because it reduces overall gas emissions, is more time efficient because it reduces traffic, increases safety while traveling, and is more fuel efficient per passenger compared to if each individual passenger were traveling by themselves (7). Scooters have been beneficial to the environment because they run on electricity rather than gas. There is still some controversy regarding the overall safety of scooters because yes, they do help reduce carbon emissions, but there is argument that scooters put people at risk because of scooter related accidents on college campuses. On the other hand, a study in 2018 tells us that 40 million trips were taken on electronic scooters, which is beneficial for the environment and human health because it significantly decreases gas emissions and helps protect us against polluted air. (8)
As I touched on before, the presence of coronavirus has had a significant impact on transportation not only in Bloomington, but in the entirety of the United States and the world. The reasoning is simple, people are less inclined to leave their houses now because of fear that they will be exposed to the coronavirus. Even us as students and faculty are rarely attending in person classes so that we can keep our health a priority. I can make a personal testimony to this because I tested positive for COVID-19 today, and I know that this is going to impact my transportation use because I can’t expose others in my community to the virus, especially if they are at high risk.
Going off of that, air pollution is a threat to people who are have contracted COVID-19 “because the fine particles penetrate deep into the body, promoting hypertension, heart disease, breathing trouble, and diabetes, all of which increase complications in coronavirus patients. The particles also weaken the immune system and fuel inflammation in the lungs and respiratory tract, adding to the risk both of getting COVID-19 and of having severe symptoms”. (3) On the other hand, the decrease in transportation because of quarantine has had positive effects on air pollution because it has decreased significantly all over the world. “Pollution levels have plummeted as lockdowns aimed at slowing the viral spread have shuttered businesses and trapped billions of people at home”. (3) Although corona virus has had such a detrimental impact on the world, it is a tiny positive light that it has caused cleaner air, which in effect can help people recover from coronavirus more quickly.
In Bloomington, the economy is projected to take a 2-5% loss as a whole, with parking meters and facilities taking a 1.1 million dollar loss from July through April. (1) This shows that Bloomington, like other places all over the world, has reduced travel significantly since the start of the pandemic. This could be a positive sign because it shows that less cars are traveling on the roads because people aren’t in need of parking. From the research I have collected, it is obvious to me that alternative methods of transportation in Bloomington are crucial for cutting emissions, but it has been especially difficult to speak on just because everything is so crazy right now with any type of transportation. In my next blog post, I’m going to be surveying students about their choices regarding transportation before and after the start of the pandemic to see if I can get any more insight on this matter.
Sources:
(1) Burks, Ethan. “Bloomington Estimates COVID-19 Could Reduce Revenues 2-5%.” News – Indiana Public Media, 29 Apr. 2020, indianapublicmedia.org/news/city-discusses-covid-19-impact-on-next-years-budget.php.
(2) Gu, Jiang, and Christine Korteweg. “Pathology and Pathogenesis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.” The American Journal of Pathology, American Society for Investigative Pathology, Apr. 2007, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1829448/.
(3) Kachroo, Nasir. “Pollution Made COVID-19 Worse. Now, Lockdowns Are Clearing the Air.” Pollution Made the Pandemic Worse, but Lockdowns Clean the Sky, 20 Apr. 2020, www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/pollution-made-the-pandemic-worse-but-lockdowns-clean-the-sky/.
(4) Leyland, Louise-Ann, et al. “The Effect of Cycling on Cognitive Function and Well-Being” PloS One, Public Library of Science, 20 Feb. 2019, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6388745/.
(5) National Geographic Society. “Air Pollution.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/air-pollution/.
(6) “Resources.” Sustain IU, sustain.iu.edu/resources/index.html.
(7) “The Benefits of Alternative Transportation.” Sadhec.gov, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, www.scdhec.gov/sites/default/files/Library/CR-007047.pdf.
(8) Warnick, Aaron. “Shareable Scooters Offer Risks, Benefits for Transportation: Research Documents Causes of Injury.” The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association, 1 Sept. 2019, thenationshealth.aphapublications.org/content/49/7/1.3.
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