05.19.08
Posted in Advocacy, Bike Commuting, East Bay
by Margherita at 7:17 am
Inertia at the Top
Belated, Patchy Response Further Hamstrung By Inadequate Federal Attention, Experts Say
By Susan Levine and Lori Aratani
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 19, 2008; A01
The problem at first was that the problem was ignored: For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter — ate more, sat more — and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government.
But since the alarm was finally sounded in the late 1990s, the problem has been the country’s reaction: a fragmented, inchoate response that critics say has suffered particularly from inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level.
“The sense of this as a national health priority just doesn’t come through,” said Jeffrey P. Koplan of Emory University, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chairman of the Institute of Medicine’s 2004 study of childhood obesity. The top recommendation of that seminal report was for the government to convene a high-level, interdepartmental task force to guide a coordinated response. No such body has been assembled.
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03.05.08
Posted in East Bay
by Mark at 4:30 pm
From an EastBayRI.com article:
The long-studied Warren Bike Path will be delayed yet again, as a review of the proposed site by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation has triggered a request for an archaeological study by the Narragansett Indians.
The survey was recommended to the town in a March 3 letter. Because of the survey, about four to six weeks will be added to the bike path’s completion time. This will allow the town’s engineering firm, the PARE Corporation, to request a survey from the Public Archaeological Laboratory and to complete the survey.
The $2.5 million project was most recently pitched and planned after a re-design by PARE in April 2006. The first idea for a trail came in 1987, with the idea morphing into a bike path in the 1990s. However, the state’s engineering firm went bankrupt, which required Warren to hire PARE to complete the work. The path would stretch 4,500 feet, from the Warren-Fall River railroad bed near Long Lane to the end of the Kickemuit River.
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11.12.07
Posted in East Bay
by Mark at 9:19 pm
The Projo had a recent article about how the Bristol Town Council is considering building some bathrooms at the end of the East Bay Bike Path. For those of us who commute via the bike path, this would be a welcome addition. Hopefully, other towns along the path will follow suite, especially at the Northern end of the path.
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