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Evaluating the impact of UBC’s ‘walk and roll to school week’ program on children’s active travel mode share to school

University of British Columbia

With the rise of physical inactivity among children, there has been a decline in children’s active school travel (AST) like walking and bicycling to and from school. The school journeys are a prime opportunity for introducing children to active travel modes. To address lack of physical activity and a decline in AST among children, a variety of transportation policies and programs have been developed. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of the School Travel Planning (STP) encouragement program on children’s active travel mode share to school. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare active mode share at two elementary schools that organize a ‘Walk and Roll to School’ (WNR) week program with two control schools in Vancouver, British Columbia. The observational counts were carried out at the four study schools to collect data on children’s mode of travel to school. The counts were conducted in four waves. A difference-in-differences approach was used to estimate the intervention effect of the WNR week program. An audit of pedestrian and bicycling facilities was also conducted near the study schools to assess infrastructure barriers to AST. The results from the study suggest no significant immediate impact of the WNR week program on children’s active mode share (walking, bike, and other non-motorized modes like scooter, skateboard, and rollerblade) to school during or shortly after the WNR week. Changes in active mode share to study schools over the weeks investigated were not significantly different from those in the control schools and appeared to be primarily influenced by the weather and daylight conditions. However, because the WNR week is an ongoing annual event at the school since 2013, there could be a long-term positive effect on AST, which was present in the “before” observation and not be observed in this study. It is recommended to possibly consider implementing alternatives to STP interventions to influence children’s travel behaviour to schools for achieving immediate and short term gains. Also, studying the long term impacts of STP programs on children’s AST rates to and from schools and to include control schools in analysis for future research.

Text

2020-09-11

Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/76029

Planning

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/