CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The default is powerful. Ask grocery store owners who influence your purchase by stocking certain items at eye level and at the end of aisles.

Ask software companies, who encourage downloading add-ons by defaulting the settings in that direction.

Ask large employers, who default employees into a 401k plan for retirement savings, rather than asking employees if they want a 401k.

And ask city planners, highway engineers, and zoning officials, who can influence health and behavior every day by designing our cities and streets to encourage or discourage active transportation. What is your default transportation "choice" every day?

According to national data, half of the four trips taken daily in an average household are three miles or less. This trip is very comfortable on a bike --- in fact 85 percent of all bike trips are three miles or less. Such a trip can burn up to 300 calories, even at a modest pace, and cost up to $3.75 to drive in an SUV according to AAA.

However, only 1.8 percent of these trips are ridden on a bike! Trips of a mile or less encompass 27 percent of all daily trips, yet 62 percent are taken in a vehicle. One mile is a very comfortable distance to walk, can burn up to 100 calories, and costs roughly 75 cents in an SUV according to AAA.

I save more than $1,000 annually in transportation costs (not to mention the health care cost savings) by walking, riding, and using transit rather than driving my seven-mile round-trip daily.

Walkable areas that include "complete streets" benefit the local economy by commanding higher home sales prices and retail rents per square foot and increased sales in walk-up retail customers versus drive-up customers. Walkable, Complete Streets also save households money on transportation (second highest expenditure in household budgets); provide an opportunity for safe, healthy physical activity (less than one-third of state residents meet national physical activity guidelines); and enable residents of all ages and abilities a measure of independence.

I live in an urban area in Morgantown, similar to Charleston, Huntington, and other great West Virginia cities that are ripe to become national models for active communities. Young parents, like my wife and me, demand a safe place to walk our children -- not on the street, but next to it on a sidewalk. However, our state maintained roads are dangerous by design, limiting such beneficial activity.

Roughly 20 percent of the road mileage in Morgantown is managed by the state, yet over 60 percent of the 144 pedestrian-vehicle accidents in the last six years have occurred on these roads! Unfortunately many of these roads have been designed to make driving the default option. We must change this.

The question is this: Should the state invest in its communities and residents by adopting a Complete Streets policy? Or should it continue the status quo, spending only 0.6 percent ($1.55 per capita per year) of federal money on pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure (the fourth lowest rate nationally)? Should the state ask other agencies to foot the bill for obesity and physical inactivity related costs ($208 annually per taxpayer; sixth highest nationally) and injuries to its residents?

Interestingly, a case study of infrastructure improvements in Baltimore, Md., showed that for each $1 million spent creating on-street bike lanes, pedestrian projects, or roads, 14, 11, and 7 jobs were directly or indirectly created, respectively. Thus non-motorized projects provide a bigger bang for the buck in job creation!

These issues are about the ability of West Virginia to provide a good quality of life for its residents and retain young families and workers and their tax dollars that are fleeing the state every day. For these many reasons it is wise for the state to invest in its residents and taxpayers, who have borne the burden of unwisely spent transportation dollars for far too long. Such  investment would pay off in the long-run.

Abildso is a pedestrian advocate and researcher in Morgantown.