Abstract
BackgroundInterventions to encourage active modes of travel (walking, cycling) may improve physical activity levels, but longitudinal evidence is limited and major change in the built environment / travel infrastructure may be needed. East Village (the former London 2012 Olympic Games Athletes Village) has been repurposed on active design principles with improved walkability, open space and public transport and restrictions on residential car parking. We examined the effect of moving to East Village on adult travel patterns.MethodsOne thousand two hundred seventy-eight adults (16+ years) seeking to move into social, intermediate, and market-rent East Village accommodation were recruited in 2013–2015, and followed up after 2 years. Individual objective measures of physical activity using accelerometry (ActiGraph GT3X+) and geographic location using GPS travel recorders (QStarz) were time-matched and a validated algorithm assigned four travel modes (walking, cycling, motorised vehicle, train). We examined change in time spent in different travel modes, using multilevel linear regresssion models adjusting for sex, age group, ethnicity, housing group (fixed effects) and household (random effect), comparing those who had moved to East Village at follow-up with those who did not.ResultsOf 877 adults (69%) followed-up, 578 (66%) provided valid accelerometry and GPS data for at least 1 day (≥540 min) at both time points; half had moved to East Village. Despite no overall effects on physical activity levels, sizeable improvements in walkability and access to public transport in East Village resulted in decreased daily vehicle travel (8.3 mins, 95%CI 2.5,14.0), particularly in the intermediate housing group (9.6 mins, 95%CI 2.2,16.9), and increased underground travel (3.9 mins, 95%CI 1.2,6.5), more so in the market-rent group (11.5 mins, 95%CI 4.4,18.6). However, there were no effects on time spent walking or cycling.ConclusionDesigning walkable neighbourhoods near high quality public transport and restrictions on car usage, may offer a community-wide strategy shift to sustainable transport modes by increasing public transport use, and reducing motor vehicle travel.
Highlights
Interventions to encourage active modes of travel may improve physical activity levels, but longitudinal evidence is limited and major change in the built environment / travel infrastructure may be needed
Longitudinal analyses were restricted to 578 who had valid global positioning system (GPS) data at both baseline and follow-up and baseline characteristics for these 578 adults are shown in Table 1 by East Village/Control group and housing group
In the social housing group, the East Village and Control group were similar in age, sex and socio-economic distributions, but the East Village group were more likely to be of black ethnic origin
Summary
Interventions to encourage active modes of travel (walking, cycling) may improve physical activity levels, but longitudinal evidence is limited and major change in the built environment / travel infrastructure may be needed. Changing the built environment to promote use of public transport may offer a strategy to increase physical activity levels, through increased walking and cycling [11,12,13], which could potentially impact on health [14,15,16]. There have been calls for high quality evidence to evaluate the effect of environmental interventions on health behaviours, physical activity, making use of natural experiments where the population effects of change in travel infrastructure can be examined [23,24,25]. The degree of change should ideally be compared with a control population who are similar socio-demographically but not exposed to the same change in travel infrastructure [27], and analysis conducted within a rapid time scale to distinguish any potential effects (favourable or otherwise) from underlying trends in physical activity levels over time
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