As a matter of health, Americans need to walk more and drive much less. The benefit derived from walking just thirty minutes a day can be quantified by medical practitioners. Almost any new project built in the last ten years does not include provision for sidewalks in the development cost.

To the extent possible with business agreements and loan agreements, I think the cost of sidewalks should be added to developments. In certain instances walking trails can be added to the ring highway systems that have been constructed around so many of our major cities. We need to look for and quantify the development opportunites that could arise from the development of such transportation systems.

For example, in Atlanta, I believe a safe and sound walking trail could be constructed on the side of Interstate 75 from Marietta on the north to Jonesboro on the south. This could encourage new forms of commerce along that segment of the highway. Walkers could go to major shopping centers along that route. A few, perhaps as many as a thousand or so might find it a convenient way to bicycle or walk to work. If such a walking path could be constructed beside this highly congested roadway, it would not only benefit the health of the walkers but it would have some modest environmental impacts as well.

Volusia county, FL. no longer has a community development board because only two members get paid. The volunteers all resigned stating they did all the work while the paid board members did not. The funds are there, but no one bothers to write up the grant to obtain funding. Therefore, no section 8 vouchers are to be provided for an indefinite time, and many people are homeless, including familes with school-aged children. I am on disability and on the verge of becoming homeless. The rents are very high, as this county has one of the highest foreclosure and unemployment rates in the state and the country. Can something be done to make the county write the grant to obtain the funding to once again have this much needed commitee/board start work again. Many homeowners need and want section 8 renters. More people are becoming homeless, and I am very afraid.

I think the model which is a key element in this initiative should include a dataset for ferry transportation as an alternative to new bridge construction. In certain cases, the capital costs of a system of ferries to replace or supplement an existing bridge may be less over a capital budgeting timeline than the cost of new bridge construction. I think this could especially be the case for expansion of existing heavily traveled bridges. The transportation problem of the peak could be lessened with a ferry system that would remove several hundred cars from the road.

I have not seen any data on the environmental impact of a sea going or river based ferry. However, a substantial body of data exists on the environmental impact of cement production. When the CO2 burden of expanding a bridge is compared to establishing a ferry link across a waterway, I think it is possible that the ferry would compare favorably to adding on to an existing bridge. Such a system might be more costly than the cost of bridge expansion but the environmental consequences could be less.

I understand that this concept is speculative at this point but I think this is the idea of the Transportation Initiative. We need to assemble the data for policy makers to assess transportation alternatives. Including data on maritime alternatives in the model would give them an expanded range of alternatives to consider.

I would like to get some feedback on an idea I had for a transit innovation that would help people living in assisted living facilities and nursing home. Although this is not necessarily something that would affect HUD or HUD programs directly, it would benefit HUD if successful in that it would enable operators of long term care facilities to comfortably locate their operations in areas where it might be difficult to do so now.

The idea is a medical bus designed to transport up to twenty people in a wheel chair or in a personal scooter, The bus would have twenty individual pods, ten on each side. The side panel would fold out and drop to the ground to serve as a lift that would then be used to lift the patient back into the bus. The center line of this bus would serve as a walkway to allow a medical assistant to attend to the patients loaded aboard this bus when it is underway.

This bus would have up to twenty individual lifting systems so it would obviously be expensive. It may not even be possible to do because of the weight considerations involved. I am not an engineer so I do not know.

However, such an innovation would greatly facilitate evacuation of the clients of a nursing home in an evacuation scenario. It would take five such vehicles to move patients out of the path of a hurricane for example. I also think it would reduce the cost of routine trips to the doctor's office at large assisted living facilities. Although it is a round-about way of doing so, this innovation has the potential to reduce the cost of long term care by a small amount.