01552290

Component

Significant research and policy interest over the last decade has centered on improving walking and cycling for school transportation. A child’s school travel behavior may change with transition to youth. An improved understanding of the differences and similarities between children and the youth can have important policy implications, but the topic remains understudied in current literature. Within this context, this paper examines school travel mode choice behavior of 11 year old children and 14-15 year old youth in Toronto, Canada. Morning period school trip data, obtained from the 2006 Transportation Tomorrow Survey, was analyzed using multivariate logit models. Distance to school was the most important barrier to walking for both age groups; neighborhood built environment characteristics (i.e., major street intersections, retail density and block density) had a stronger association with a child’s likelihood of walking compared to a youth; and access to transit was correlated with only a youth’s travel mode outcome. In addition, a male youth was more likely to walk than a female; gender of a child was not associated with school travel modes. As school travel related programs are beginning to be adapted to the high-school context, results indicate that the current North American model that is largely designed around transportation infrastructure may not be very successful. Instead, programs and initiatives should emphasize education, and perhaps attempt to understand and reshape the culture of youth mobility, in order to encourage healthy and sustainable travel practices among high-school students.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB10 Transportation Safety Management.

01550057

15-0965

English

17p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Bicycling; Demographics; Elementary school students; High school students; Mode choice; School children; School trips; Travel behavior; Walking

Toronto (Canada)

Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-0965

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 12:24PM