walking to school: a planning perspective

Walking to School: A Planning Perspective | Sushobhan Sen | CEE 417/UP 430

CEE 417/UP 430: Urban Transportation PlanningHomework #1

Walking to School: A Planning PerspectiveSushobhan Sen

[email protected]

Introduction

With climate change posing a serious threat to the planet, it is becoming increasingly apparent that

each and every person has a role to play in lowering humanity’s carbon footprint. This is more so in

the United States, where cars are the mode of choice for travelers even for short distances. Among

many plans for meeting this goal are the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs implemented across

the US as part of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for

Users (SAFETEA-LU), 2005. However, it is important to assess the impacts of the Act and the

challenges in meeting its goals. In the study (McDonald & Aalborg, 2009) under review, the potential

impact of the SRTS program is evaluated to see whether it can meet its stated goals i.e., to

encourage more students to walk or bike to school instead of driving or being driven. Although there

have been limited studies on this before, they were lacking in either sample size or control samples

to filter extraneous factors impacting the study.

Background: What are the Issues?

As noted in (McDonald & Aalborg, 2009), the proportion of students walking or biking to school

declined from 41% in 1969 to a mere 13% in 2001. Of course, this does not necessarily imply a

reduction in the actual number of students walking or biking to school, since the population has

grown over that period, but the sharp decline in proportion calls for strong policy interventions

because it has a bearing on air quality, health and traffic congestion, among other issues. Thus, the

SRTS program was initiated under SAFETEA-LU, 2005 with the objective of encouraging students to

walk or bike to school by making it safer and more appealing to them and their parents; and to aid

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measures needed to meet those goals. 70-90% of the funds were to be used for infrastructure

development such as sidewalks, bike paths and rails, with the rest being allocated to non-

infrastructure requirements such as planning and coordination.

The Study

Samples were selected from Marin County, CA, which has the oldest SRTS program in the country,

dating back to 2000. Zip codes were used to generate a representative sample of households with

children between 10 and 14 years of age, which is the range during which parents begin allowing

their children to travel independently. 41% of the sample lived within one mile of their school.

Parents were asked open-ended questions about their children’s mode of travel to school and the

factors affecting that choice. The respondents were largely representative of the population as per

the 2000 US Census, although Hispanics were over-represented.

The study found that in the morning, 46% of students were driven to school and 30% walked, with

that proportion becoming skewed in favor of walking in the afternoon, possibly because parents are

unable to leave work to pick up their children. Within a two mile radius of school, 46% walked or

biked, with a strong negative correlation with distance. Parents’ responses were divided into two

categories: convenience and safety. 75% of those who drove to school cited the former as the

reason; with 30% citing the latter (multiple reasons were possible). This categorization was however,

not justified and appears arbitrary. Interestingly, of that 30%, 75% also did not allow their children to

walk unsupervised by an adult.

Why do students drive to school?

As mentioned previously, 30% of parents cited safety as the reason for driving their children to

school and of them, 31% considered strangers to be the primary fear, not traffic safety as assumed

by current SRTS programs. Infrastructure development can improve safety from traffic but it cannot

do anything about strangers on the way – adult supervision is needed for that. In addition, the

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marginal time advantage gained from driving, such as sleeping-in for a few minutes extra, cannot be

easily countered through policy interventions.

Among the projects that can be implemented under the SRTS program, the Walking School Bus

(WSB) program is studied and found to be a promising solution. Essentially, it is a planned,

supervised walk to school along fixed routes, which allays fears of unsupervised travel. However, as

demonstrated in (Kingham & Ussher, 2005), a similar initiative in Christchurch, New Zealand, saw the

number of WSBs and students participating in them fall by about half from 2000 to 2003 because of

the difficulty in finding volunteers to ‘drive’ the children. Thus, although parents did by and large

support the program (Kingham & Ussher, 2007, pp. 506-507), it petered out because it had become

inconvenient for volunteers. Using senior students as volunteers is also an unviable option because

of liability issues (McDonald & Aalborg, 2009, p. 338). However, schools can solve this problem by

including the SRTS program under their insurance policies and Parent Teacher Associations can be

asked to partially fund this.

Policy Recommendations

Another viable solution for WSBs would be hiring designated ‘drivers.’ However, SAFETEA-LU

currently does not provide for using non-infrastructure funds to pay the ‘drivers.’ Interestingly, the

Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), 1991 provides funds for encouraging

intermodal transportation across states, but not specifically for students. The study recommends

that, since rising fuel costs are making ISTEA goals for school buses difficult to achieve, funds could

be taken from there and used to pay ‘drivers’ under SRTS programs (McDonald & Aalborg, 2009, p.

339) and thus expand the scope of ISTEA to include walking and biking.

In addition, it is important to structure policies so as to provide baseline support for the safety of low

income and minority students, who have little choice but to walk or bike to school at great risk to

themselves. Since it is mostly White, middle-class students living in suburbs who drive to school,

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funds would inevitably move in their favor because of the inelastic modal choice of low income and

minority students. By ensuring baseline safety to such students, the goals of the SRTS program

would improve qualitatively, if not be met quantitatively.

Opinion on the Study

The SRTS programs across the US are backed by $612 million of federal funding under SAFETEA-LU,

2005 and every penny spent must be carefully assessed for impact. The study clearly points to the

need to discuss issues in depth with the public while formulating policies. While the findings seem

reasonable, the choice of Marin County, which already has an established SRTS program, makes it

difficult to extrapolate the results to the rest of the country. The choice of telephonic interviews to

gather data was possibly a liability because of the low percentage of parents who responded;

working with schools to conduct the study would have been a better option. In addition, as already

stated the categorization of responses into two neat sets seems arbitrary and possibly even a case of

pre-judging responses. Including some questions with fixed responses to validate this categorization

would have made the study more robust. Nonetheless, the results are useful for urban

transportation planners.

Conclusion

The SRTS program is a promising way to reduce carbon emissions but its effectiveness is yet to be

assessed comprehensively. Already, the way the program is structured appears to misjudge the

issues at hand, with parents citing strangers as a greater danger than traffic. Parental education can

help in this regard, but its effects are difficult to objectively measure. WSBs are an effective solution

but come with inherent risks of being a burden on the community and crossing legal barriers of

liability. Thus, it is important to restructure the SRTS program to provide institutional and financial

support to WSBs in order to make them sustainable, while ensuring baseline funding for vulnerable

students who have no choice but to walk or bike to school.

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References

Kingham, S., & Ussher, S. (2005). Ticket to a sustainable future: An evaluation of the long-term durability of the Walking School Bus programme in Christchurch, New Zealand. Transport Policy(12), 314–323.

Kingham, S., & Ussher, S. (2007). An assessment of the benefits of the walking school bus in Christchurch, New Zealand. Transportation Research Part A(41), 502–510.

McDonald, N., & Aalborg, A. (2009). Why Parents Drive Children to School: Implications for Safe Routes to School Programs. Journal of the American Planning Association, 75(3), 331-342.

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walking to school: a planning perspective

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