Steps Really Add Up for Transit Users in Walk & Roll Program

Forty-two commuters who volunteered to wear pedometers over a five-week period to see how close they came to 10,000 steps per day beat that goal on average -- with some 500 steps to spare.

But what made the difference was their Walk and Roll.

The commuters, who regularly walk to or from a train station or a bus stop, logged more than nine million steps altogether as part of an unusual program called Walk and Roll which promotes the benefits of walking in combination with taking public transit.

Launched July 11 by Caltrain and its transit partners at Muni, SamTrans and VTA, the program’s purpose is to highlight the opportunity to incorporate the simplest and most accessible form of physical activity -- walking -- into a normal commute.

The 42 Roll Models, who already take walking to transit in stride, were asked to track their steps to see just what a difference it can make. The results, which were released at an event at the San Francisco Caltrain Station today, revealed impressive totals and some equally impressive “commute stories.”

The Walk and Rollers chosen for the program were instructed to jot down their steps on 20 work days to see to what extent their routine walk to work helps them toward a goal of 10,000 steps per day.

The participants averaged 10,499 daily steps doing their normal walk-plus-transit to get to work. On days when they did something different, such as getting a ride, carpooling or driving, they averaged just 5,921 steps.

Walking-plus-transit days generated an average of 4,578 extra steps.

Many of the participants had never worn a pedometer before and were surprised how their steps added up.

“Wow, did I walk a lot! I didn’t realize how many steps,” said Barbara Schrag of San Jose, who walks from home to the Tamien Caltrain Station and then from the Mountain View station to her job at the Center for Performing Arts.

Her average daily step total: 13,077.

The participants ranged from some who only walk a few blocks to others with veritable marathons.

Raul Salazar, for example, walks nearly an hour from his residence on Upper Market Street in San Francisco to ride Caltrain to Palo Alto, where he boards a shuttle to a library at Stanford University.

Once there, Salazar, who is multilingual, spends his day reading through stacks of incoming Romance language books in order to assign catalog numbers so they can be shelved. The mileage he racks up to and from Caltrain is how he gets exercise not available in such a sedentary job.

“It’s low-stress,” Salazar, 51, said of walking to transit. “It’s fresh air. It doesn’t take that much to do it. It’s not physically hard. It’s healthy and it’s easy.” And it adds up -- for an average of 14,826 steps per day.

The goal of the program was to see how much walking to or from transit helped the participants toward accumulating 10,000 steps per day, a goal that is widely promoted a measure of moderate physical activity. Reaching that level was not in itself the goal.

But many of the Walk and Rollers found that wearing a pedometer was a digital conscience, motivating them to set their own goals even higher.

Yet another benefit of walking became more apparent over the last few weeks with rising gas prices.

“I think I’ve probably saved a lot of money,” said San Franciscan Wayne Sera, 43, who decided to go carless five years ago and rely on Muni, Caltrain and his feet to get around. He saves $200 a month just for garage space.

Sera, who works in Foster City and logged 12,519 steps per day during the program, says wearing the pedometer was “good reassurance that I’m doing something healthy.”

THE WALK AND ROLLER PERSPECTIVE

Even rainy weather or walking in darkness is something these Walk and Rollers take in stride.

“The weather is never really bad right here,” said attorney Michael Korbholz, 68, of Palo Alto, a 20-year veteran Walk and Roller, who also jogs before he leaves for San Francisco. “A lot of people just don’t want to take the time to walk,” he said. “I enjoy it.”

David Reichard’s Walk and Roll to Mountain View begins about 4:40 a.m., when he walks a mile from his home in Corte Madera for a bus ride to The City, where he walks another half mile to Caltrain.

Although he could get to work faster if he drove, it’s the return trip in traffic that’s the killer. On the bright side, during his five-hour commute the 56-year-old technical writer has time to sleep, eat breakfast on the train – and get in his favorite form of exercise, a total of 9,882 steps on an average workday.

Tom Brocher, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, used to drive from his home in Millbrae, stopping along the way on the Sawyer Camp Trail next to the Crystal Springs Reservoir to walk.

Now, he rolls that exercise into his commute, walking both from home to the train and from there to work. That option is even easier now that the Caltrain stations he uses – Millbrae, Menlo Park and Palo Alto – all have Baby Bullet service.

Mary Ann Parrot, the City of Santa Clara’s finance director, recently maximized her time on the train by monogramming dinner napkins for her soon-to-be daughter-in law.

“Two round-trips to finish a napkin,” she said, adding that during the walk from the train station to work she’s had a chance to meet some co-workers.

9/16/05