Burnaby’s medical health officer says a Yes win in the upcoming transit referendum could boost the city’s health more than many of the drugs doctors prescribe.
Dr. Lisa Mu, whose job is to promote health among Burnaby and New Westminster residents and protect them from health risks, came out in support of the Yes side this week.
“This is one of the most critical decisions that we can make for public health in the Lower Mainland probably for this decade and probably many more to come actually,” she told the NOW.
The biggest health benefit of a Yes win for Burnaby, according to Mu, would be improved public transit.
She said she decided to speak out this week because the referendum campaign is at a critical point and she has come to realize most people don’t associate transportation with health.
They should, according to Mu, because even a small boost in transit use sparked by better service could have a big impact on community health, she said.
“If shifting something in the environment can shift behaviour at a population level, for whole communities by one, two, three per cent, that’s actually huge,” she said. “That’s actually much more significant than a lot of the drugs that we prescribe.”
The health benefits of using transit pile up over time, Mu explained.
“A bus trip is really an interrupted walking trip,” she said. “People walk to the bus stop, they walk to the SkyTrain and then they walk at the other end. People who take transit to work are not going to be driving to go somewhere for lunch. They’re going to be walking for their errands, walking for lunch during the day, and these are all steps that accumulate over the course of the day. Then, over the course of months to years, we see huge differences.”
Transit users in the Lower Mainland are twice as likely to walk 30 minutes a day and more likely to meet daily activity recommendations than non-transit users, according to a study last year cited by Mu.
“That has huge benefits in terms of chronic disease prevention and in terms of mental health and well-being,” she said.
For Mu, who walks, cycles, takes transit and drives to get around, the upcoming plebiscite on the proposed $7.5-billion transportation plan and 0.5 per cent regional sales tax to help pay for it is not about TransLink.
She is urging local residents to vote Yes on the plan because she said rejecting it would delay what she calls “critically needed transportation improvements.”
In Burnaby, she pointed to proposed new express buses and increased capacity on SkyTrain and existing bus routes that will make transit use a more appealing alternative to car travel.
“I think that there’s been a lot of conversation about the politics,” she said of the referendum campaign, “and I think that folks really deserve to hear what some of the facts are, and I think that as a medical health officer, I have a responsibility to speak up on issues that I think are really important for the health of my communities and for the health of the region.”
