Maybe so. NPR reports on a study that found taking public transportation is slimming (even more so than vertical stripes!).

It’s not the magical weight-loss properties of light rail—it’s “all the walking” to and from your stop, which in this case was walking about a mile at least once a week. Go figure.

15 replies on “Does This Car Make Me Look Fat?”

  1. I end up walking extra miles on days when I commute by bus, usually because I can’t get away early enough to leave fifteen minutes of slop time for whichever driver’s erratic, personal version of its brief, “rush hour only” schedule. Missing the last bus of the day, at the late, late hour of 5:30 PM means a two mile walk into downtown Bellevue to wait in a huge line for one of the other buses heading up the 405 corridor and extends my ten mile commute to a convenient several hours, rather than the 16 minutes it would take by car.

  3. Maybe they’re dropping pounds with all the anxiety of waiting in dark stations for trains rather then jumping into their cars and going when they want to.

  4. What about the reverse effect? Stress causes weight gain. You know, like the stress of plodding along in stop-and-go rush hour traffic in a single-occupancy vehicle, narrowly avoiding accidents with inconsiderate drivers, fretting over that weird rattling sound that your car just started making the other day…meanwhile, I walk to my bus, get on board, read a book or take a nap, and get to my destination at about the same time I would if I drove myself. Exercise and piece of mind – see how that works?

  5. @4, your bus route must be pretty empty if you can actually get to sit down for your commute.

    Getting jerked off your feet a lot as the bus pokes down the 405 corridor in that same stop and go traffic (in the “express” lane!) doesn’t lend much peace of mind.

  6. If the bus could get me to work in a reasonable amount of time I’d take it, but since I have to backtrack virtually my entire route, it’s a 20 minute drive vs. an hour to 90 minutes on the bus.

  8. @4,

    A bus showing up a half hour late is pretty stressful. So is having to take an earlier bus and arriving at my destination up to a half hour early because Metro can’t be bothered to be reliable.

  9. #4. So what you’re saying is that mass transit creates eating disorders. People binging on snacks and vomiting in the elevator….

    Quite possibly….Quite possibly!!

  11. I live on Cap Hill. I have a choice of 3 bus routes within 5 blocks of my house which get me to work in 15 to 20 mins. 2 of them drop me off across the street and the other requires I walk 2 additional blocks. It is pretty great, even if one of them is the much-maligned, yet useful, #43.

  14. @13, do not count on Will in Seattle to supply any correct “facts” in any discussion.

    He is completely, ludicrously wrong here. Downtown accounts for considerably less than 10% of the jobs in the metro area, and the city of Seattle as a whole only about a third of the jobs in just King County alone. Both of these disparities are rapidly increasing, as both the City of Seattle and especially downtown continue to shed jobs, while the rest of the county and especially the other counties in the region more than make up the difference.

    Seattle is rapidly turning into a bedroom community for well-off white people with jobs in the suburbs.

Comments are closed.