dits. Interestingly, neither audit- nor GIS-derived measures correlated well with participants’ perceptions of walkability.
Hajna, Samantha, MSc, Kaberi Dasgupta, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Max Halparin, BA, Nancy A. Ross, PhD. (2012). Neighborhood Walkability: Field Validation of Geographic Information System Measures. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 44(6), e51-e55. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2013.01.033
This report summarizes findings associated with the successful implementation of a Safe Routes to School program in an elementary school in metropolitan Atlanta, GA between 2008–2010.
Elements of the program that led to its success may inform future policy efforts related to active transport to school. This was a multilevel, multi-sector, intervention involving education, community capacity building, enablement and reinforcement through supportive environments and evaluation. Elements and results included:
- Safe Routes to School Task Force: Parent volunteers formed a Safe Routes to School Task Force comprising the school principal, nurse, and physical education teacher, as well as the county police, public works staff, board of health, and a county commissioner. This Task Force formed the basis of a movement to increase social capital at the community, school, family, and the individual level in order to shift the entire school community culture toward one of active transport.
- Education: An informed and engaged community participated on its own behalf. Students, parents, school staff and faculty focused on Safe Routes to School goals of increasing walking roundtrip to school, decreasing traffic, and improving air quality around school. Pedestrian safety education was provided through the Physical Education program. The PTA and local churches were involved. Maps were provided of best walking routes and an extensive publicity campaign was undertaken.
- Various local and federal resources were available to help support community infrastructure projects. Interactive Community Police and infrastructure improvements helped improve safety along routes to school.
- Built environment improvements to increase active transport to school benefited the surrounding community as nearly 40% of communities are within ½ mile of a public school. Five crosswalks were restriped and raised walking intersections and new traffic lights were installed.
- Parental surveys confirmed increased rates of walking to school (18% to 42% in two years) and parental perceptions of health benefits and enjoyment of walking increased. Rates of walking home did not change.
Susan Henderson, Robin Tanner, Normal Klanderman, Abby Mattera, Lindey Martin Webb, John Steward. (2013). Safe Routes to School: A Public Health Practice Success Story—Atlanta, 2008-2010. Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 2013, 10, 141-142.
- This novel interdisciplinary collaboration between public health and computer science provides automatic analysis of existing public data feeds to quantify the impact of built environment intervention on increasing bike travel mode share.
- The Archive of Many Outdoor Scenes (AMOS) has archived over 225 million images of outdoor environments from more than 12,000 public webcams since 2006. Using the publicly available webcams and a custom web crawler (similar to the web search engine or Google), webcam images are captured at the rate of one image per camera per hour and given a time stamp. Many of the locations have had built environment improvements such as complete streets, bike share startups or walking school bus programs. AMOS is able to document and allow quantification of population behavior changes following the built environment modification.
- The intersection of Pennsylvania Ave NW and 9th ST NW in Washington, DC where bike lanes were installed was chosen as a location to monitor transportation mode share comparing the first workweek or June 2009 and the first week of June 2010 (pre-bicycle lane and post-bicycle lane).
- Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) website was used to crowd-source the image annotation. MTurks are simple tasks not yet c