ance from school had a greater impact on the walking or bicycling to school habits of suburban students compared to urban students.
- The authors contend that actively commuting to school gives children the opportunity to explore nature, get exercise, and develop cognitive skills. With the barriers to active commuting to school identified, the Safe Routes to School Programs in Illinois can target their resources effectively to encourage children and their parents to consider walking and biking alternatives for trips to and from school.
Fries, R., E. Sykut, et al. (2012). Barriers Influencing Illinois Children School Travel Mode Choices. Advances in Transportation Studies 27.
- This study examined the relationship between state laws requiring minimum bussing distances, hazardous route exemptions, sidewalks, crossing guards, speed zones, and trafﬁc control measures around schools and active travel to school (ATS) policies and practices in nationally representative samples of U.S. public elementary schools between 2007–2009. The state laws and school data were compiled through primary legal research and annual mail-back surveys of principals, respectively.
- A pooled, cross-sectional analysis examined the relationship between the state laws and the school policies and practices.
- A stacked, cross-sectional data set containing 1967 schools over the combined period, 2007–2009, comprised the ﬁnal study sample (with 578, 749, and 641 schools included in each of the three corresponding study years).
- Multivariate logistic and zero-inﬂated poisson regression indicated that all state law categories (except for sidewalks) relate to ATS. These laws should be considered in addition to formal Safe Routes to School programs as possible inﬂuences on ATS.
- Nearly 40 percent of schools were located in states with minimum bussing distance requirements; 23.4 percent were located in states with hazardous route exemptions.
- More schools allowed all students to walk to school if the state had a minimum bussing distance law of greater than one mile or a law requiring sidewalks or traffic control measures.
- The odds of zero students walking/biking to school were 68 percent lower in states requiring crossing guards and 55 percent lower in states requiring speed zones.
Chriqui, JF, Taber, DR, et al. (2012). “The impact of state safe routes to school-related laws on active travel to school policies and practices in U.S. elementary schools.” Health & Place 18(1): 8-15.
- Walking and bicycling are important but underused modes of transportation in the United States. Road design influences how much walking and bicycling takes place along streets and roads. Currently, numerous national policy initiatives, including Safe Routes to School and Complete Streets, are attempting to improve pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure and “friendliness.” However, no state has completed a systematic assessment of its streets to determine how amenable they are to walking and bicycling. This statewide study was undertaken to assess how accessible and friendly Hawaii roads are to these 2 activities.
- The authors randomly selected street segments in Hawaii’s 4 counties and then completed objective assessments using the Pedestrian Environmental Data Scan. They audited 321 segments, and interrater reliability was adequate across all measures. Streets were coded as high (42.4%) or low capacity (57.6%) depending on how much vehicular traffic the street was designed to accommodate. Outcome measures included street accommodations (ie, sidewalks and crossing aids) and pedestrian and bicyclist use.
- Most high-capacity streets had sidewalks (66%). These sidewalks were usually in good condition, contiguous, and had traffic control devices and pedestrian signals. Most low-capacity roads did not have sidewalks (63.4%). Bicycling facilities were limited (<10%) on both types of roads. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic was related to mixed use, including both residential and retail space, and to pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure.
- Road segments in Hawaii with more infrastr