Browsing by Subject "School transportation"
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Item Past and present of active school transportation: An exploration of the built environment effects in Toronto, Canada from 1986 to 2006(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2016) Mitra, Raktim; Papaioannou, Elli M.; Nurul Habib, Khandker M.The health benefits of walking and cycling to and from school, also called active school transportation (AST), are well documented. In the context of a declining trend in AST across the Western world, this paper examines school-travel behavior of 11-year-old children in Toronto, using multiple cross-sectional data from 1986, 1996, and 2006 Transportation Tomorrow Surveys. Results from binomial logit models suggest that school-travel distance and neighborhood built environment indeed explain some variation in the odds of AST between 1986 and 2006, and that the correlates of AST may have changed over time. Higher neighborhood block density correlated with walking/cycling in 1986. In contrast, household automobile ownership was negatively associated with AST in 2006; the effect of the built environment was relatively weak for that year. In addition, fewer children walked/cycled in 2006 compared to 1986, even when distance to school was short (<0.8 kilometers). Policy and programs should recognize the potentially changing role of travel distance to school and automobile ownership on a child’s school travel outcome. Interventions in neighborhoods with high automobile ownership should specifically focus on education and encouragement to increase AST rates.Item School travel route measurement and built environment effects in models of children's school travel behavior(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2016) Larsen, Kristian; Buliung, Ron N.; Faulkner, GuyThe most common form of physical activity for people of all ages is walking, thus the use of active travel modes, such as walking or cycling for school trips, can increase daily physical activity levels. School travel is one way to encourage walking and cycling on a daily basis. Much of the recent literature reports inconsistent results pertaining to how the built environment may relate to active school travel. To date, there is no consistent approach toward conceptualizing the "environment" for its measurement, and this may be partially to blame for the inconsistent results. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to examine how characteristics of the built environment might relate to mode of school travel, while testing how measurement of the environment may influence the results in terms of the shortest path or respondent reported route mapping. The results indicate that model parameter estimates vary when using these two route measurement methods. Differences in the conceptualization and measurement of the school travel environment could carry forward into misguided planning or policy interventions targeting environmental features that may actually have no influence on school travel decisions.