Safe Routes to School - Mode-Share Analysis
Date
2011-07
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Institute for Public Administration
Abstract
The nation, with Delaware being no exception, faces a number of pressing issues. Healthcare costs are spiraling out of control. Energy costs, particularly fossil fuels, have proven highly volatile and are inexorably trending higher. These, along with a number of other factors, have put state budgets under increasing pressure. Concurrently, America has been facing an obesity epidemic, which a preponderance of research concludes is a key driver of healthcare costs, second only to tobacco use. Unfortunately, Delaware’s students constitute the norm rather than the exception. While a comprehensive accounting of the factors underlying obesity is beyond the scope of this report, it is clear that a number of things in the American lifestyle have changed in the past several decades. Though most born prior to 1940 and a goodly portion of the baby-boom generation will proudly recall “walking uphill in the snow to and from school,” this is no longer the case for our state’s students and, in many cases, was not for their parents either.
In response, many states began Safe Routes to School initiatives, designed to identify and mitigate barriers to students’ ability to walk/cycle to school and increase incidence of walking and physical activity. In Delaware’s SRTS program, participating schools poll their students pre- and post-intervention to determine any change in walking rates. However, there was no baseline for comparison. This project’s purpose was to provide that baseline for the state and each county through analysis of survey data collected from parents of school-aged children living within walking distance of school. Understanding why parents would either allow or not allow their children to walk or bicycle to school was also an area of interest.