"Excessive weight now kills more Americans than smoking. Over the past decade, there has been a series of studies that attribute obesity and its related illnesses directly to the automotive lifestyle and, better yet, to the automotive landscape. One effort found that for every additional five minutes Atlanta-area residents drove each day, they were 3 percent more likely to be obese. Another showed that drivers who switch to public transit drop an average of five pounds."

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

"While walkability benefits from good transit, good transit relies absolutely on walkability. Most transit trips begin on foot - if people can't walk to the stop, they won't ride. And once they get off the bus or train, people are pedestrians again. If their destination isn't within a convenient walk, transit won't get them there...As a result, while walkability benefits from good transit, good transit relies absolutely on walkability. This simple fact is often the key to transit's success or failure in a community. And yet it is so frequently ignored by transit agencies that focus only on the route and the vehicle, ignoring the pedestrian experience to and from the stops."

Section: 2, Chapter: 4