Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:03
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
We looked at all the things that people felt would be safe. We also looked at some of the hazards which we got into and just asked them a series of questions. Would you write if this that the other thing and the majority of respondents, the vast majority of respondents said they would love to ride the bicycle more if they thought it was safer to everyone.

00:00:22:03 - 00:00:46:18
John Simmerman
Welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman and that is Dr. Matt Schaeffer, general surgery resident at Wright State University. Premier Health. We're going to be talking about of study and survey that he did about perceptions with bike lanes. It's fascinating. So let's get right to it with Dr. Schaeffer.

00:00:46:20 - 00:00:51:04
John Simmerman
Matthew Schaeffer, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.

00:00:51:07 - 00:00:53:07
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

00:00:53:10 - 00:01:00:17
John Simmerman
Matthew, I love giving my guests an opportunity to introduce themselves, so I'll turn the floor over to you.

00:01:00:19 - 00:01:28:02
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. So long story short is my name is Matt Shafer. I am a fourth year general surgery resident. I will be applying to a trauma critical care surgery, fellowship programs later this year, looking forward to taking care of critically injured patients. And I have made a long history in a lot of experience with how the built environment impacts public health and impacts our patients.

00:01:28:05 - 00:01:44:23
John Simmerman
Oh, wow. Okay, cool. Yeah. You and I know each other through our mutual good friend, Dr. Dick Jackson, who has been a guest here on on the podcast. And so tell me more about that long relationship with health and the built environment.

00:01:44:25 - 00:02:23:16
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. So I guess it started out back when I went to undergrad at Grinnell College. I knew that I wanted to be pre-med and that the ultimate career goal was medicine. I was a kid who grew up in the suburbs and didn't really think much about the built environment, really saw the car as the key to freedom, and then went to a residential school in rural Iowa and had the opportunity to be a wellness coordinator, a homeless coordinator, and kind of learn more about how college life and just anything around us affect our well-being.

00:02:23:19 - 00:02:55:20
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
I was fortunate enough to go on a trip to Denmark, actually as a junior, investigating what makes what made them the happiest country in the world and really an interesting experience. Learning that they didn't think of happiness is the way we do. They just really see it as contentment and not wanting for anything and then progressing along. I worked in downtown Chicago for a couple of years doing dermatology research, and that was the first time I really lived in a city without a car.

00:02:55:23 - 00:03:16:23
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And I actually found that to be extremely liberating and found that I didn't have to work out as much as I did in college to keep the same level of fitness and progress I had to getting into medical school. I went to University of Illinois at Peoria and the urban infrastructure was nowhere near what it was in Chicago.

00:03:16:23 - 00:03:17:09
John Simmerman
Chicago.

00:03:17:11 - 00:03:42:05
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And I really wanted to be able to ride my bike or walk around to school each day, but that was not a safe option. And then in applying for residency programs, I was really pleasantly surprised. I interviewed at Wright State and Dayton and found that there was a bike lane all the way from my hotel to the hospital and in the recruitment materials.

00:03:42:08 - 00:04:11:21
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
They really advertise that Dayton has the most paved trails of any city in the US and like Dayton, Ohio, has more paved bike trails like how is this possible? So bring up the Miami Valley Bikeway and yeah, over 350 miles of paved bike trails going in and out of cities in the region. A lot of ground to trail network right out in the countryside and all of that.

00:04:11:25 - 00:04:37:04
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And of course, as I learned more about health and wellness and medicine, one of the biggest things that we talk to all of our patients about is behavioral modification, lifestyle change. Eat that good to get 20 or 30 minutes of exercise a day and, you know, try try not to be sedentary. That's really the best advice we can give people on a baseline level.

00:04:37:06 - 00:04:58:09
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And it was just very interesting to me that we can tell people this all the time, but we don't build places that make that easy. People actually go out of their way to go to a gym or out of their way to get to a doctor's appointment or to get to surgery. You know, how many busses or transfers or whatever does it take just to get to places on time?

00:04:58:12 - 00:05:14:09
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And we really build a place that forces people into the car. And I think it's very detrimental to people's health. But as a surgeon, I can say that we see a lot of obesity related diseases and it makes surgeries a lot more challenging.

00:05:14:12 - 00:05:36:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I was I was surprised when I saw this graphic as well. So the Miami Valley Bikeway is the nation's largest paved trail network, and it sounds like most of these are off street networks of trails that, like you said, a rail trail, types of things and other types of corridors. Is that correct?

00:05:36:19 - 00:05:37:24
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
That is correct. Yeah.

00:05:37:24 - 00:06:26:12
John Simmerman
Interesting. Okay, fantastic. And and that can work for for a community and for an area. I mean, you can really leverage those types of facilities. I love to call them activity assets. You can really leverage them to help facilitate connectivity and and safe inviting environments for all ages and abilities. If this is a huge if they're well connected to the community and the community has access and the neighborhoods have access, in other words, when they're not just seen as recreational facility only where someone drive to the trailhead and then, you know, rides on them and then comes back to their car and goes, But, you know, so it's they're they're wonderful assets.

00:06:26:12 - 00:06:52:24
John Simmerman
I mean, they're probably one of the most comfortable assets to have activity assets to have because of the physical separation. And that's going to become a common theme of what we're going to be talking about. But I get the sense that all is not perfect in Dayton because we also have a heck of a lot of this. So tell me, this isn't your bike lane that you were saying that you were able to ride.

00:06:52:26 - 00:07:19:20
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
This coincidentally, was the bike lane from the hotel to the hospital. Okay. Interestingly enough, when I moved to Dayton right now, wife and I found a nice little townhome very close to the downtown baseball stadium and close to where that hotel was. And lo and behold, this is the bike lane that I take to work every day. And I would say normally at residency hours are pretty crazy.

00:07:19:20 - 00:07:43:22
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So what I'm going very early in the morning, this is not typically your problem, but we definitely have rotations where we're coming in on off hours or we're working overnight. So when we're on a night shift, we're actually going into the hospital, usually during the afternoon rush hour, 430, 5:00. And I would say pretty much every single day when I'm on one of those rotations, this is what my commute looks like.

00:07:43:24 - 00:08:10:12
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah, yeah. And as a result, that then parking lane off to the side, often people, they have very large vehicles and are not all the way over across the line so they're seeing out into the bike lane. I'm worried about getting doored as this demonstrates. So very frequently I ride in one of the vehicle, three lanes and then of course that gets me honked at and I think probably does 20 points for bicyclists in the area.

00:08:10:15 - 00:08:12:21
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So it's kind of a lose lose situation.

00:08:12:24 - 00:08:33:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's a terrible design and it's really an old design. It's an antiquated design. This is a design that, you know, really was sort of advocated for decades ago of, Yeah, oh yeah, we'll just paint a bike lane here and oh yeah, that's fine. It can be in the door zone, we don't care, you know, blah, blah, blah.

00:08:33:11 - 00:09:17:12
John Simmerman
And back in the day when it was just mostly just mammals that were writing middle aged men in Lycra and and more confident riders that may be doing some commuting, riding to work, etc.. And most of them were also middle aged men or or young, brave, and, you know, in fearless men. But at the same time, you know, like I would imagine, you know, you wouldn't feel comfortable having an eight year old be in this environment because it's not an all ages and abilities facility And and yeah, I'm looking at this and going, wow, five lanes, you know, two parking lanes and then three motor vehicle travel lanes all in one direction.

00:09:17:14 - 00:09:29:13
John Simmerman
This is a massive high speed kind of corridor. Whether it is high speed or not in terms of the signage is clearly encourage high speed just because it's a massive tarmac.

00:09:29:15 - 00:09:59:21
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah, that's right. And fortunately, we'll look at the crash data and a little bit fortunately, I think because downtown Dayton is becoming more pedestrianized, This, thankfully is not one of the high crash areas, but exactly right. They have the line that it's timed so that people can get a green wave. And so if you're coming in at the tail end of it and you know that the lights are timed up the way they are, you can easily go 40, 50 miles down this downtown street.

00:09:59:23 - 00:10:05:14
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. And what's this?

00:10:05:16 - 00:10:10:10
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So this one gets further explained by the next photo, but this is.

00:10:10:10 - 00:10:11:10
John Simmerman
Actually.

00:10:11:12 - 00:10:35:17
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
This is actually the parking garage where I park my bike as evidence and in the second photo. And so they have the bicyclists come in through the vehicle exit lanes of the parking structure with gates down. You know, you could come in on the other side of the parking garage, go up a ramp, and then down a ramp and get to the bicycle rack.

00:10:35:20 - 00:10:52:03
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Or you can just travel an extra hundred feet down the street and go in through the exit area, which is a blind turn. Obviously, there are cars coming out, but that is the only bicycle rack for the seven story parking garage.

00:10:52:06 - 00:10:57:20
John Simmerman
So so what you're telling me is that they haven't necessarily really thought this out.

00:10:57:22 - 00:11:13:10
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And they haven't found it out even even when it has been pointed out to them that people will do bicycle and would like better bicycle facilities, better parking access. And frankly, I haven't received a response now.

00:11:13:10 - 00:11:16:23
John Simmerman
And when you say they who's they at?

00:11:16:24 - 00:11:37:18
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So I don't want to throw my employer under the bus, so to speak. But the hospital administration actually, yeah, I will say the the physician recruitment team has been very responsive and has reached out to several people. But when I have tried to directly contact the Office of Safety, I have gotten really no response.

00:11:37:21 - 00:12:22:27
John Simmerman
And it's not to pick on your employer, but I will make this generalized statement, you know, from the 30 some odd years that I've been in this in this realm, doing this work, is that one of the most challenging environments that we have Our hospitals and medical districts and things of that nature. And the irony is just is like is so thick because you're like, wait a minute, you know, these should be like health promoting places and these should be places of, of like you use the term wellness, but in reality, it's, you know, there's this car brain mentality of, you know, oh, well, nobody would ever ride a bike here.

00:12:22:28 - 00:12:55:14
John Simmerman
No one would ever walk here. No one would use transit to get here. It's like, Oh, no, seriously, guys. So anyways, so we're back to to some of the infrastructure here. And so this is actually kind of cool. This is this is a parking protected bike lane. It's not functioning the way it should because there's a little confusion here with this particular driver parking in the bike lane nestled up next to where the parking meters are.

00:12:55:16 - 00:13:18:06
John Simmerman
But it's easy, you know, for us to take one look at this and see, Oh, well, yeah, I mean, of course, the confusion, you know, in a little bit of design tweak of making it impossible for a car to, you know, get across in part there, you know, just have a few barriers, like a few planters or whatever in that Gore area there.

00:13:18:06 - 00:13:34:01
John Simmerman
And then, voila, you have a successful, you know, parking protected and planter protected environment. But yeah, if the design's not perfect, if then if the design's not quite right, we end up with this.

00:13:34:02 - 00:13:49:29
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah, that's exactly right. And so this, this is actually a view of Jefferson Street, which was under construction when I moved here to Dayton. And it is one block over from that first photo we looked at. So this is traveling the opposite direction.

00:13:49:29 - 00:13:53:25
John Simmerman
And so this is the couplet. So this is the one way couplet. Yeah.

00:13:53:28 - 00:14:18:25
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
That's right. And so this is kind of, like you said, the newer design parking protected with a buffer bike protected bike lane. And to Daytona Ann's credit, they have definitely gotten better over that a couple of years since it's been implemented, but it's still not perfect. There's still no true protection in terms of physical barrier preventing cars from getting over.

00:14:18:26 - 00:14:38:22
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So I think culturally people are getting a little bit more used to it. But very frequently I still run into this situation where there is a car parked in bike lane and cars are double parked, like you said, with a couple of small design tweaks. And this was after a little while living in Dayton, kind of starting to get frustrated with, yeah, without all the bike trails.

00:14:38:22 - 00:15:06:21
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
But we still don't see bicycling as commuting. It's just a recreational activity. So getting a little bit frustrated. I vented on social media like a responsible adult will do. And so this is an Instagram post that I made highlighting that the infrastructure was imperfect. And interestingly, some people are not at all involved in bicycling or urban design or any of that commented.

00:15:06:23 - 00:15:11:06
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
I think this would work better if they had just moved the parking meters into the buffer zone.

00:15:11:08 - 00:15:32:29
John Simmerman
I was just going to say, yeah, I mean that's that could be part of the protection. Like, for instance, you know, I mentioned, you know, planters in that area. You know, increasingly I would love to see, you know, a lot more paving happening, a lot a lot more, you know, jackhammers being taken to some of these things and and putting in some rain garden stuff.

00:15:32:29 - 00:16:04:10
John Simmerman
But yeah, in addition to you could have used those bollards, you know, they could see or serve as bollards those, those parking meters. Yeah. Move those parking meters over and you know and that would help with that confusion. Many cities are completely getting rid of the meters. Completely. I mean they're, they're actually using, you know, an app. And so the app, you know, on the phone doesn't even need to articulate and communicate with an actual parking meter.

00:16:04:10 - 00:16:27:01
John Simmerman
And so there's none of that detritus, you know, on the sidewalk at all in in those types of situations. Then, yeah, you can, you know, make the the buffer area. They're very pretty. You could be a ring garden, etc. and you get your parking over there and, and voila, you have a much safer and much more sustainable environment.

00:16:27:03 - 00:16:29:16
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
All in one. And it's exactly right.

00:16:29:19 - 00:16:48:12
John Simmerman
Good stuff. So you started doing some some research and you started asking questions. And so this is, you know, a question of, you know, which one looks safer. And we're going to dive into some of the research that you did. Walk us through this particular image here.

00:16:48:15 - 00:17:36:09
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. So shortly after posting that first one to Instagram got pretty good response. I more than I was anticipating. And then I went on a vacation down to Florida. We were in Miami and I was seeing some of the noticing some of the different infrastructure and the different pedestrian and bicycle facilities there. And just for me, being a nerd and reading way more into anything that I have any right to get really interested in on what is the actual data type behind the different types of bicycle facilities, which ones are better at present, preventing crashes or injury crashes, fatalities, etc. And then I decided to just have a little fun with it and make a

00:17:36:09 - 00:18:00:01
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
little quiz. And over that course and vacation would post a question each day and then follow it up kind of the next day with the answer and then post another question later that day. And I'm not a huge social media person, just due to lack of time and probably some of my most engagement I've received. So people clearly are interested in.

00:18:00:03 - 00:18:22:26
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
I had some other posts that I didn't share in this presentation, but you know, one involving the height of the front end of a car and which which one would be more dangerous because again, being a general surgery resident, we work on the trauma service and we are the first responders in the hospital when someone has some type of trauma.

00:18:22:28 - 00:18:46:18
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So we are the ones who are doing that resuscitation. And if someone needs to go to the operating room for emergency surgery, that's on us, that's our purview. So I'm seeing people come in battered and bruised and broken in all kinds of ways. And really, I think it's something that's not talked about enough outside of our circles. And it's I find it really interesting.

00:18:46:20 - 00:18:52:18
John Simmerman
When you say motor vehicle size is kind of what you're referencing. Yeah.

00:18:52:20 - 00:19:24:03
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And, you know, the auto industry, to their credit, builds bigger vehicles as safer. And I don't think we ever talk about risk homeostasis and how when people feel safer, they actually engage in riskier behavior and the negative externalities of larger cars and the increased crash rates and fatality rates involving larger cars or trucks, etc., really flies under the radar, especially in the medical community.

00:19:24:05 - 00:19:50:12
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And I think is something that there is some awareness of, but probably not enough attention paid to anecdotally. And this is something that I'm working on then will be a future study. But anecdotally I feel like we get a lot more injured patients and critically ill patients from crashes involving SUVs and trucks than anything else. And that.

00:19:50:16 - 00:20:13:13
John Simmerman
Well, and that makes sense. I mean, it's physics, right? I mean, we're talking about size and mass and speed and and all of these things. And you're absolutely right. And we, the imperial, we society, we're not talking about it that much. The the more focused we of active towns and strong towns and and others that are doing work in this arena.

00:20:13:13 - 00:20:28:00
John Simmerman
We're talking about it till we're blue in our face places that this is a huge issue and we need to deal with this. So you somehow got inspired by all this and you're like, okay, let's start doing some some studies and sort of set this up.

00:20:28:02 - 00:20:57:02
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. So I have to thank Dr. Seamon. He is one of our trauma attendings, and he's pretty vocal about calling crashes, crashes instead of accidents. And one day he was scrubbing into a case in a different O.R. for me. And I was scrubbing, scrubbing as just washing our hands, getting prepared to enter the operating room for surgery and he said, Hey, you know, I've seen some of your social media posts.

00:20:57:04 - 00:21:22:10
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Why don't you do some research on it? And I was like, okay. I kind of thought I had to be a little bit more standard basic science or surgical outcomes research. And he brought up to me that especially in the trauma world, injury prevention is a very big deal and it's something that they actually publish pretty frequently. And he said there are plenty of great outlets for you.

00:21:22:10 - 00:21:52:19
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And I think based on some of the things that you have already talked about, there are plenty of opportunities for research and opportunities right? Some papers in high impact journals. So let's let's chat and see what we can do. We are not a huge academic research center, so we kicked around a bunch of ideas. I was lucky enough to just called email people and that's how I got Joe, y'know, involved.

00:21:52:19 - 00:22:26:09
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
He is one of the chief engineers on this for the city of Dayton and he does bike to work regularly and so he is one of the big implementers behind some of the newer bike infrastructure with the parking protected bike lanes and the barrier protected cycle tracks that are starting to go into the city of Dayton. And I got in touch with Matt Lindsey with the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, who is one of the kind of more data savvy guys who does some of the crash data for my Valley Regional Planning Commission.

00:22:26:12 - 00:23:02:05
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And we put a team together and try to figure out what what are the gaps that we have and what are the issues that we face. And they said they're always looking for more data. And one of the most difficult things to capture is near-misses. And then we also don't necessarily know the city is taking an approach to try to follow Vision Zero and complete streets and implement bicycle infrastructure, but they don't have a lot of rapid feedback mechanisms or like a concrete feedback mechanism in place.

00:23:02:07 - 00:23:32:21
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So we figure that as a starter, we could we could open up a community survey to get some of that data that they were missing and that could steer us toward some of the problem areas for future crash research and injury and brutality research and so in digging into that, found a lot of data that every year most of the people on this channel would be aware of is that more and more people are trying to commute by bike.

00:23:32:23 - 00:23:56:24
John Simmerman
Let me let me pause you just there for a second. When you say commute by bike, I just want to make sure we're using the we're on the same page in terms of terminology and language. Oftentimes when the studies are done there and they use the word commute, they literally only mean the commute to work. I'm assuming that you need something more broadly than just commute to work.

00:23:56:27 - 00:24:03:17
John Simmerman
I'm assuming that this is people are increasingly using the bike for everyday purposes.

00:24:03:19 - 00:24:10:27
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yes. Yeah. In their research I read it was more focused on commuting to work specifically.

00:24:10:27 - 00:24:39:03
John Simmerman
That's mainly because of the data source that they use. They use the American, whatever it is, you know, and that's a very problematic dataset to be using anyways because it's like the majority of the trips that people make on a daily basis actually end up not being the commute. And now that work has shifted so much because of of being able to work from home, we're starting to see even more so idea.

00:24:39:06 - 00:25:01:09
John Simmerman
Eventually, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get better sources of data that really kind of like understand that yes Americans are increasingly using a bicycle and hopefully even walking and hopefully even using transit, you know, more frequently to go to meaningful destinations that aren't necessarily the office or the school.

00:25:01:12 - 00:25:32:28
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So. That's right. And that is one of the things that we looked at. And and and so, you know, and looking into the trauma data, even though the majority of crashes, our vehicle, the vehicle, the pedestrian versus vehicle and bicycle versus vehicle are disproportionately severe, disproportionately fatal. Anecdotally, those are broken people that come in. Those are the ones that really raise your antenna for like this is someone who is going to need all hands on deck.

00:25:33:00 - 00:25:50:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, well, it's not a fair fight for our civil unions or, you know, it it's like, yeah, okay, so under methods here, you're talking a little bit about what we've got going on. Walk us through this process here.

00:25:50:03 - 00:26:23:15
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. And so once we had settled on doing a community survey, our goal obviously was still to publish it somewhere. So I had to find a way to make it novel because there have been tons of these done throughout the US, which is a good thing. And one thing that I was finding is that there were a couple of studies where they had suggested preference for types of bicycle facilities and even one or two I think that might have had a diagram for design, but there I didn't find any and I hope someone can tell me I'm wrong.

00:26:23:17 - 00:26:55:26
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
I didn't find any with real world photos of what different types of bicycle infrastructure looked like and how people responded to it. So I wanted to ask the community members of Dayton, what do you feel when you see these photos? So we put together a web based survey so that we could display the images on it and able to print it out as a PDF to make available and some of the bike share locations and things like that, just to try to capture as many people as we could.

00:26:55:28 - 00:27:28:00
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And then, you know, with all research, there's our demographics table. I do I do like to point out too that it was predominantly male but actually had pretty decent female respondents. I always try to people who aren't as familiar with this area of research try to emphasize that women and children are the indicator species of safe facilities. So the fact that Dayton actually had a third, close to a third of the respondents on this survey be female is actually fairly encouraging.

00:27:28:02 - 00:27:35:13
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Of course, then you look down a little bit here and year olds like that's not that's not very good.

00:27:35:15 - 00:27:41:00
John Simmerman
And I'm assuming that's not necessarily representative of the population demographics.

00:27:41:03 - 00:27:42:17
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
It definitely is not.

00:27:42:19 - 00:28:24:16
John Simmerman
Okay. Okay. That's one of the challenges that we certainly have. And you had 139 completed surveys and then we start to talk about the difference between near-misses and crashes. And so we've got your crashes at 26, near misses at 724. So yeah, far outnumber the near-misses. And you know, I like to say too, that when we look at creating safer streets and safer roads, what we end up also seeing, especially when we bring our motor vehicle speeds down, is that they're, you know, you just you're not seeing as many crashes in as many collisions, period.

00:28:24:18 - 00:28:45:09
John Simmerman
And some of them may be considered, Oh, yeah, that was kind of a near miss. But oh, by the way, we were like we were both going 15 miles per hour. And it was like, okay. It was like, it's certainly not a near miss that road, but you send your, your blood pressure up. So. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay, so this is no big surprise.

00:28:45:09 - 00:29:01:27
John Simmerman
So walk us through this. We've got our different types of bicycle facilities down below and I'm going to race ahead and give the, the, the, the indications and we'll let you just kind of walk us through all these different segments here.

00:29:02:00 - 00:29:26:16
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. And so what we found is that by and large, people prefer more physical separation from vehicles, namely, and we'll get into what people felt threatened by on the road this year, particularly on streets type of facilities. But these were looking at all types of bicycle facilities. And which ones did they feel the most safe or perceived to be the safest.

00:29:26:19 - 00:29:55:27
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And it's no surprise that the ones that are the most separated or are completely not on the street are the ones that are highest rated. And so we were looking at respondents saying safe or very safe, and anything that had a substantial physical barrier. So this being either a trail or a separated path or a barrier protected lane, those were all the ones where over 80% of respondents said safe or very safe.

00:29:55:27 - 00:30:02:16
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And those are the things that the types of facilities that they would prefer to ride on. It.

00:30:02:19 - 00:30:19:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Big surprise there, huh? So again, these are these are the, the preference that that people have. So again, we're not really surprised by any of this, but now we're looking at perceived danger here.

00:30:19:09 - 00:30:48:13
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And so similarly, I just from my own riding experience, thought about the things that again put my antennas up, showing me that things are going to be a little bit hairy and no surprise, cars in pretty much every format, parked cars, double parked cars, traveling cars. At any time a car is involved with a bicyclist, the bicycle rider felt that that was dangerous.

00:30:48:16 - 00:31:01:18
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
The only, I guess, side one from that is that people also perceive scooters, motorized scooters that were unoccupied, left in a bike lane to be as dangerous. So yeah, yeah.

00:31:01:19 - 00:31:10:09
John Simmerman
Because it's it's a it's like it's a detritus. It's like something, you know, it's a barrier that happens to be in there. Okay.

00:31:10:12 - 00:31:26:15
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah, that's exactly right. So in this one, we were looking at everyone who replied as high or very high danger and all of the things where over 50% of respondents said higher, very high danger were involving a car or an unoccupied motor scooter.

00:31:26:18 - 00:31:33:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. Interesting. Okay. No, no real big surprises here either.

00:31:33:08 - 00:31:55:20
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
No, no, huge surprises. But this is the first time it's been done in our urban setting. And so it was useful for, again, giving our engineering department and our planning department more data just to say, you know, these aren't big surprises compared to other studies that have been done, but this is further evidence that it holds true for our locality as well.

00:31:55:23 - 00:32:00:23
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And there's some reason to keep doing what we're trying to do.

00:32:00:26 - 00:32:05:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. Okay. So more people would ride if.

00:32:05:20 - 00:32:44:22
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And that's right. So we compared there didn't really compare, but we looked at all of the things that people felt would be safe. We also looked at some of the hazards we can get into and just ask them a series of questions of would you ride into this, that the other thing and the majority of respondents, the vast majority of respondents said they would love to ride their bicycle more if they thought it was safe, If their perception of the route or facility is safer, they would ride their bicycle more and then additionally, they would ride their bicycle more if there were a comprehensive network of safe routes and trails.

00:32:44:24 - 00:33:00:07
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So again, it's not a huge surprise to us if it's easy, convenient and safe, more people choose it. That's kind of the flip side of induced demand that we can use to our advantage for building active transportation networks.

00:33:00:09 - 00:33:11:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love this part here too. So, you know, I've done my fair share of surveys as well and some of the cool stuff that comes out with the comments.

00:33:11:29 - 00:33:30:06
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yes. Oh, yeah. And as soon as I saw the way an avenue a comment, I was like, well I have to use that for, for on the publicity. I joke is on that respondent I have ridden my bike on Wind Avenue. I agree with them. Ten out of ten would not recommend.

00:33:30:09 - 00:33:32:28
John Simmerman
Yeah. Are both of these are Wayne Avenue. Both of.

00:33:32:28 - 00:33:58:21
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
These both. Yeah. So both of these shots are different segments of Wayne Avenue. So yeah, the one on the left is a little bit further south actually. That's right. By the local grocery store, one of the only grocery stores downtown. And you see your stereotypical 2 to 3 lanes each way, no middle turn lane poster child for needs, a road diet.

00:33:58:24 - 00:34:06:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the most dangerous designs of roadway designs ever developed by man.

00:34:06:22 - 00:34:23:27
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. And then try to photo on the right is a little bit closer to the heart of downtown. It's actually just outside of the historic bike. Very pedestrianized area. The Oregon district. And there you see one of the outdated bicycle lanes in between parked cars and the through it.

00:34:24:00 - 00:34:25:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah.

00:34:25:06 - 00:34:27:11
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Dawson Yeah.

00:34:27:13 - 00:34:33:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. Okay. Here we are. So. Yeah.

00:34:33:13 - 00:35:14:03
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. No big surprises. Yeah. Again? Yeah, no big surprises for the audience here. But a good example that Dayton is like many other American cities and that the people's perceptions here are similar to where they are in other places. And it coincided pretty well with the city developing their first active transportation plan. So we were actually able to roll this data into some of the data that Susan Vincent, the Planning Commission was using as part of the active transportation plan, and I was able to present this alongside her at the Miami Valley Bicycling Summit earlier this year.

00:35:14:05 - 00:35:34:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. And of course, you know, recommendations for a safe systems approach to all of this and trying to really do what we can to get to the root cause of these challenges that we have. And again, the root cause is that we have a dangerous environment.

00:35:34:23 - 00:36:05:03
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah, that's exactly right. And that, you know, as much as we study this and try to educate people about it, having good design really goes a long way towards influencing behavior. Kind of like we talked about earlier, where the bigger cars and people to riskier behavior driving things when they feel safer. If the road dictates our behavior a little bit to behave safer or to walk more or bike more, then I think we can utilize it.

00:36:05:05 - 00:36:06:12
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah.

00:36:06:14 - 00:36:14:10
John Simmerman
You know, I have to give credit to your your your machine here. So it looks like this is your get around town vehicle.

00:36:14:12 - 00:36:31:03
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah. So this is actually brand new and I have not used it for a commute yet. I have taken it for a couple of spins. I literally put it together last week and this was this was a birthday present from my wife and.

00:36:31:06 - 00:36:34:01
John Simmerman
And have you taken her for a ride yet?

00:36:34:04 - 00:36:58:28
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
I keep asking her to and she she says she wants a seat belt which I can't argue with. So I said I think that that be part of the Christmas spirit. Hold on to my shoulder. It's like my IV, my waist is grip level. I promise. Yeah, Yeah. But I really wanted it in here just to highlight that because I work in a hospital and have to have pretty quick times.

00:36:58:28 - 00:37:41:15
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
If I'm on call at home, I do have a car and I do have to drive more than I would like to. And I recently took my car in for servicing and just routine maintenance on my car that I only got a couple thousand miles on. The year was $400. And it's to get a lot older. So there are a couple of things wrong with it that I wanted to call on to see How expensive would it be to get these to perfect working condition and to that fix a couple of mirrors and the latch for the console and the passenger side window to make it roll automatically would cost over 1500 dollars.

00:37:41:17 - 00:37:52:09
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And this ebike was less than that. So I get a whole form of transportation for less than maintenance on a vehicle. Yeah, yeah.

00:37:52:11 - 00:38:18:08
John Simmerman
Which I think is a really important thing to, to, to emphasize to especially when we're looking at trying to create mobility systems that are are really equitable for for everyone across, you know, in entire the economic spectrum. And we're looking at people who are trying to survive and trying to, you know, participate in our community, in our economy.

00:38:18:10 - 00:38:37:00
John Simmerman
And if the barrier to entry is having to own and operate and maintain a motor vehicle or car, it's that's a huge barrier to entry. You know, and and significant we know that significant amount of household incomes end up going to supporting these beasts.

00:38:37:02 - 00:38:59:14
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
You know Yeah. Everyone everyone gets shocked when I point out that when you look at the percentage of debt in the United States, everyone knows mortgages are number one. That makes up 50%. Everyone talks about student loans and number two at 9%. And I don't think I ever hear the media talking about auto loans being very close behind that 8%.

00:38:59:21 - 00:39:09:15
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
So we're driving things that are making us poor. They're making a sick, they're making us unhappy. And we keep, for whatever reason, doubling down on it.

00:39:09:18 - 00:39:55:16
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good point to to to point out that when we look at the affordability and we talk about housing and the need for for having affordable places to live in affordable housing, oftentimes we forget that it's the combination. It's it's housing plus transportation. And so if you're able to, you know, leverage having an inherent network of safe and inviting facilities that you can then jump off of, That is a great jumping off point to then say, okay, and how do we make our streets safer and how do we, you know, connect more and more destinations that can be serviced by both the off street network like we have represented here on

00:39:55:16 - 00:40:29:06
John Simmerman
the Trail network as well as, you know, some of the the on street facilities. Maybe it's leaning towards some of the quieter residential streets where we have lower traffic volumes and lower traffic speeds. And because it can be really, really hard to try to fix, you know, you know, these you know, these are massive strokes and these are, you know, just not very attractive or comfortable environments, even with protected facilities.

00:40:29:09 - 00:41:01:08
John Simmerman
You know, when motor vehicles are screaming down through here, I mean, it's a noisy, polluting, you know, dangerous environment even with protection. And so whatever we can do to lean into creating a network, an entire comprehensive network of all ages and abilities, facilities, the better and the more empowering that will be for, you know, everyone trying to, you know, participate in our you know, in our communities, in our society, and especially the extremely young and the extremely old.

00:41:01:10 - 00:41:27:00
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think you should have to be at least 16 years old or under the age of roughly 80 to be contributing member of our society. And, you know more and more as people are living longer and living with more medical comorbidities as we learn how to treat them better, those are more and more things that might prevent people from driving or being able to drive well.

00:41:27:02 - 00:41:33:09
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And there are more and more reasons that they should be living a more active lifestyle.

00:41:33:11 - 00:41:42:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, I love it. Good stuff, doc, is there anything that we haven't discussed that you want to leave the audience with?

00:41:42:20 - 00:42:16:25
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
I don't know if there's anything in particular. I think just if anyone is curious what what life on the other side of the trauma bay looks like. Again, I mentioned that I want to go into trauma and critical care and the critically injured patient is something that I care very deeply about. Like I really like having the opportunity to work with people who are in the worst situation possible and to see them recover and walk out of the hospital can do better is is extremely rewarding.

00:42:16:27 - 00:42:50:29
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
But seeing what happens in those initial moments, you know, that golden hour of trauma that we talk about all the time and just seeing some of that carnage that we deal with is pretty crazy. And it's it's really eye opening and it's something that I'm working on getting. Again, some of our city engineers and planners trying to get them a little bit more aware of if they could even shadow us at some point to see, hey, this is what the consequences of dangerous design looks like.

00:42:50:29 - 00:43:17:01
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And these are some of the challenges that we have even for people that are not trauma patients. Some of the challenges we deal with in surgery, with people who did end their lifestyles and are not getting enough activity, this is how this is making their whole hospital course more challenging. I think that is something that would be very rewarding and something I'm happy to talk about with anyone who's curious.

00:43:17:03 - 00:43:54:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And it's really the difference between this concept of, oh, accidents, accidents will happen versus crashes and collisions, which we know are inherently, you know, preventable. And in, in my younger years I was, you know, very much in the trauma world myself. I was a ski patrolman up in in the Lake Tahoe region. And so I was, you know, part of the team that would be responding to traumas, whether it was, you know, a skier on skier collision or a skier, you know, hits a tree sort of situation and dealing with that.

00:43:54:18 - 00:44:16:00
John Simmerman
But then also as part of the patrol, one of the things that we would look at is we would have a crash debrief and we would say, okay, is there was there something about this situation that? We could change the quote unquote, design of the environment to help prevent that is is Oh, yeah. I mean, we might want to change, you know, some of the roping in the around this.

00:44:16:00 - 00:44:38:23
John Simmerman
You know, this person just hit the one of the ski towers, you know, for the lift or whatever. You know, maybe we should be, you know, kind of shifting this around a little bit or. Yeah, we've we've got a emerging area here where the higher speeds are happening and so start to change the design a little bit of how those merges are happening and also doing what we can for traffic calming to slow people down.

00:44:38:25 - 00:45:03:01
John Simmerman
So I really can, you know, relate to where you're at because the last thing in the that we want is for somebody, you know, from a patrol perspective was with somebody to have a traumatic injury in somebody to have a devastating injury and not only ruin their day, but potentially even ruin their life. And so we would do whatever we could to, you know, try to to help prevent what was preventable.

00:45:03:03 - 00:45:16:11
John Simmerman
And I get the sense that that's exactly the spirit that you're coming from is, you know, you're going to be there to have to deal with the things that do inevitably happen. But whatever you can do to prevent them from ever happening, all the better.

00:45:16:14 - 00:45:38:08
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And that's exactly right. One of the core principles of surgery is actually a morbidity and mortality that we do weekly. We talk about surgeries, we talk about things that went wrong, things that, even if it didn't necessarily go wrong, could have gone better. And how do we optimize every single piece that we have and learn from any of the missteps?

00:45:38:11 - 00:46:12:16
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And it's something that I don't think is regularly done. To my knowledge, in the transportation world. I have yet to sit down with with a traffic engineer after after a collision and say, you know, what about this road design and then improve to prevent it. Yeah, yeah. And you know, we we again can do our M&M conference and talking to our blue in the face to figure out how could we have done every part of the resuscitation and the surgery and the post-operative care right.

00:46:12:18 - 00:46:34:28
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
You know, salvage every name and every organ and give them the best shot possible. But really the best thing would be to not get hit or not get into a crash in the first place. Right now, you know, we say in medicine, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So working on that, some prevention is really where I am most passionate.

00:46:35:01 - 00:47:15:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, well, I'll tell you the same thing that I've told Dick many times. Thank you. Thank you for being you know, engaged in the built environment and and thinking and being passionate about this particular issue because we do need that voice. And it's clear that the city has appreciated the data that you've been able to provide to help in its it's already being integrated into the future plans and hopefully we'll be able to see that manifest itself in better design in the future with those, you know, future bikeways and hopefully truly an all ages and abilities facility for the future.

00:47:15:06 - 00:47:19:09
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
And certainly hope so. And I'm here to help keep banging the drum.

00:47:19:12 - 00:47:25:14
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Doctor Matthew Schaffer, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:47:25:16 - 00:47:28:08
Dr. Matt Schaeffer, MD
Thank you so much for having me. Until next time.

00:47:28:10 - 00:47:43:05
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Dr. Schafer, and if you did, please give it a thumbs up and leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell.

00:47:43:10 - 00:48:06:18
John Simmerman
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00:48:06:18 - 00:48:26:00
John Simmerman
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00:48:26:00 - 00:48:37:16
John Simmerman
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