Noreen C. McDonald

Critical Factors for Active Transportation to School among Low-Income and Minority Students: Evidence from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey

BACKGROUND Walking to school may be an important source of daily physical activity in childrens lives, and government agencies are supporting programs to encourage walking to school (e.g., Safe Routes to School and the CDCs KidsWalk programs). However, little research has looked at differences in behavior across racial/ethnic and income groups. METHODS This cross-sectional study used data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey to document rates of walking and biking to school among low-income and minority youth in the U.S. (N=14,553). Binary models of the decision to use active transport to school were developed to simultaneously adjust for trip, individual, household, and neighborhood correlates. All analyses were conducted in 2007. RESULTS The data showed that low-income and minority groups, particularly blacks and Hispanics, use active travel modes to get to school at much higher rates than whites or higher-income students. However, racial variation in travel patterns is removed by controlling for household income, vehicle access, distance between home and school, and residential density. CONCLUSIONS Active transportation to school may be an important strategy to increase and maintain physical activity levels for low-income and minority youth. Current policy interventions such as Safe Routes to School have the opportunity to provide benefits for low-income and minority students who are the most likely to walk to school.

U.S. School travel, 2009 an assessment of trends

BACKGROUND The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has set a goal of increasing walking and biking to school by 50% within 5 years. Meeting the goal requires a detailed understanding of the current patterns of school travel. PURPOSE To document nationally representative estimates of the amount of school travel and the modes used to access school in 2009 and compare these levels with 1969, 1995, and 2001. METHODS The National Household Travel Survey collected data on the travel patterns of 150,147 households in 2008 and 2009. Analyses, conducted in 2010, documented the time, vehicle miles traveled, and modes used by American students to reach school. A binary logit model assessed the influence of trip, child, and household characteristics on the decision to walk to school. RESULTS In 2009, 12.7% of K-8 students usually walked or biked to school compared with 47.7% in 1969. Rates of walking and biking to school were higher on the trip home from school in each survey year. During the morning peak period, school travel accounted for 5%-7% of vehicle miles traveled in 2009 and 10%-14% of all private vehicles on the road. CONCLUSIONS There have been sharp increases in driving children to school since 1969 and corresponding decreases in walking to school. This increase is particularly evident in the number of vehicle trips generated by parents dropping children at school and teens driving themselves. The NHTS survey provides a unique opportunity to monitor these trends in the future.

Why Parents Drive Children to School: Implications for Safe Routes to School Programs

Problem: Rates of walking and bicycling to school have declined sharply in recent decades, and federal and state governments have committed funds to reverse these trends. To increase rates of walking and biking to school will require understanding why many parents choose to drive their children to school and how well existing programs, like Safe Routes to School, work. Purpose: We aimed to understand why many parents choose to drive their children even short distances to school, and what implications this has for programs to increase walking and biking to school. Methods: We used data from a telephone survey to explore why parents drive their children to school. Results and conclusions: We found that 75% of parents driving their children less than 2 miles to school said they did this for convenience and to save time. Nearly half of parents driving their children less than 2 miles did not allow their child to walk to school without adult supervision. Accompanying a child on a walk to school greatly increases the time the household devotes to such a trip. Few Safe Routes to School programs effectively address issues of parental convenience and time constraints. Takeaway for practice: Safe Routes to School programs should take parental convenience and time constraints into account by providing ways children can walk to school supervised by someone other than the parent, such as by using walking school buses. To be effective, such programs need institutional support. Schools should take a multimodal approach to pupil transportation. Research support: This research was funded by the Active Living Research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. and California Departments of Transportation through the University of California Transportation Center.

Are Millennials Really the “Go-Nowhere” Generation?

Problem, research strategy, and findings: News reports and academic articles contend that Millennials (those born in the last two decades of the 20th century) are different from earlier generations in their consumption and travel patterns. This article investigates the travel behavior of young American adults and compares the behavior of Millennials with those of previous generations using data from the 1995, 2001, and 2009 National Household Travel Surveys. The analysis uses descriptive statistics to profile trends and regression models to identify the factors associated with decreased travel by Millennials. In fact, automobility declines for all Americans between 1995 and 2009, but the drops are largest for Millennials and younger members of Generation X starting in the late 1990s. Decreases in driving are not compensated by increases in the use of other modes for travel, nor do decreased trip distances explain the downturn in automobility. Among young adults, lifestyle-related demographic shifts, including decreased employment, explain 10% to 25% of the decrease in driving; Millennial-specific factors such as changing attitudes and use of virtual mobility (online shopping, social media) explain 35% to 50% of the drop in driving; and the general dampening of travel demand that occurred across all age groups accounts for the remaining 40%. Takeaway for practice: These changes highlight two challenges to planners and policymakers: managing increases in automobility as Millennials age and their economic fortunes improve, and developing improved planning processes that deal robustly with the uncertain future presented by Millennials who may continue to make very different travel choices than comparable people did in the past.

Influence of the social environment on children's school travel

OBJECTIVES To analyze the association between parental perceptions of the social environment and walking and biking to school among 10-14-year-olds. METHODS Surveys were conducted with 432 parents of 10-14-year-olds in the San Francisco Bay Area during 2006 and 2007; the final sample size was 357. The social environment was measured with a 3-item scale assessing child-centered social control. Unadjusted and adjusted differences in rates of active travel to school were compared between families reporting high levels of social control in their neighborhood and those reporting low or neutral levels of social control. Adjusted differences were computed by matching respondents on child and household characteristics and distance to school. RESULTS Of children whose parents reported high levels of social control, 37% walked or biked to school, compared with 24% of children whose parents reported low or neutral levels. The adjusted difference between the two groups was 10 percentage points (p=0.04). The association was strongest for girls and non-Hispanic whites. CONCLUSIONS Higher levels of parent-perceived child-centered social control are associated with more walking and biking to school. Increasing physical activity through active travel to school may require intervention programs to address the social environment.

Urban Sprawl and Miles Driven Daily by Teenagers in the United States

BACKGROUND Urban sprawls association with increased automobile reliance and daily mileage is well established among adults. However, sprawls specific impact on teen driving exposure is unknown. Teen driver fatality rates per mile driven are significantly higher than adults, making the identification of environmental influences on travel behavior particularly important in this age group. METHODS Driving and demographic data for 4528 teens (weighted=10.5 million) aged 16-19 years were obtained from the 2001 National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS). County-level sprawl was measured using an index developed by Ewing et al. The association between daily miles driven by teens and sprawl, controlling for demographic characteristics, was modeled using ordinal logistic regression. The predicted probability of driving >20 miles in counties with varying degrees of sprawl also was calculated. RESULTS Of the surveyed teens, 48% did not drive, 27% drove <20 miles/day, and 25% drove >20 miles/day. Of the 52% of teens who reported driving, the average distance driven was 15.6 miles/day. More-pronounced sprawl was associated with increased daily mileage (p<0.001). Overall, teens in sprawling counties were more than twice as likely to drive >20 miles/day than teens in compact counties. This trend was most prominent among the youngest drivers. For example, the predicted probability of boys aged 16-17 years driving >20 miles per day varied from 9% to 24% in compact versus sprawling counties. CONCLUSIONS Sprawl is associated with increased daily mileage by teen drivers. Given the stark relationship between driving exposure and fatality risk among teens, increased efforts to understand and modify the effects of sprawl on adolescent driving behavior are necessary.

Impact of the Safe Routes to School Program on Walking and Bicycling

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Increasing walking and bicycling to school has been a national policy goal since Congress created the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program. While previous research has suggested positive program impacts, there have been no large-scale studies with strong research designs. Here we study 801 schools in the District of Columbia, Florida, Oregon, and Texas to assess how the proportion of students walking and bicycling to school changed after the introduction of SRTS programs. By including schools with and without SRTS programs and analyzing data collected over time (2007–2012), we are able to distinguish SRTS impacts from secular trends. We find increases in walking and bicycling after schools implemented SRTS programs. Engineering improvements are associated with an 18% relative increase in walking and bicycling, and the effects of education and encouragement programs are cumulative. Over the course of five years, these education and encouragement programs could lead to a 25% relative increase in walking and bicycling. Takeaway for practice: Planners should work to prioritize capital improvements that improve non-motorized access to school and revise comprehensive plans and subdivision regulations to ensure that new development supports access to school.

Activity patterns, time use, and travel of millennials: a generation in transition?

ABSTRACT Millennials, defined in this study as those born between 1979 and 2000, became the largest population segment in the United States in 2015. Compared to recent previous generations, they have been found to travel less, own fewer cars, have lower driver’s licensure rates, and use alternative modes more. But to what extent will these differences in behaviour persist as millennials move through various phases of the lifecycle? To address this question, this paper presents the results of a longitudinal analysis of the 2003–2013 American Time Use Survey data series. In early adulthood, younger millennials (born 1988–1994) are found to spend significantly more time in-home than older millennials (born 1979–1985), which indicates that there are substantial differences in activity-time use patterns across generations in early adulthood. Older millennials are, however, showing activity-time use patterns similar to their prior generation counterparts as they age, although some differences – particularly in time spent as a car driver – persist. Millennials appear to exhibit a lag in adopting the activity patterns of predecessor generations due to delayed lifecycle milestones (e.g. completing their education, getting jobs, marrying, and having children) and lingering effects of the economic recession, suggesting that travel demand will resume growth in the future.

Exploratory analysis of children's travel patterns

Recent concerns about obesity in children have focused attention on childrens travel behavior; however, there has been little study of childrens travel. Five questions should be asked to fill this knowledge gap: (a) How much are children traveling? (b) Why are children traveling? (c) With whom are children traveling? (d) How do the observed travel patterns vary with demographic characteristics such as age, race, sex, and income? and (e) What are the barriers to the analysis of childrens travel? Data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey show that childrens travel is similar to that of adults. For example, youth travel is dominated by the automobile, with nearly 75% of trips being made in a private vehicle. But in important ways childrens travel is different. Because of their youth, children often travel with others. However, the burden of transporting children is not distributed equally between parents; young children are more than five times as likely to travel with their mothers as with their fathers. Age also greatly affects how much children travel. Finally, small changes in current travel surveys could make them much more useful for the analysis of childrens travel. Young Children, Adolescents, SR2S

School Siting: Contested Visions of the Community School

Problem: The United States is embarking on an unprecedented era of school construction even as debate continues over where schools should be located and how much land they should occupy. Purpose: My three goals for this study were to trace the evolution of school siting standards, to explain the factors currently influencing school facility location decisions, and to identify what local and regional planners could contribute to school siting decisions. Methods: I reviewed the land use planning and educational facilities literatures on school siting and conducted in-depth interviews with school facility planners from 10 counties in Maryland and northern Virginia to assess their perspectives on the school planning process. Results and conclusions: I discovered that different groups use very different definitions of community school. Smart growth proponents advocate community schools that are small and intimately linked to neighborhoods, while school facility planners expect community schools to meet the needs of entire localities. I recommend that individual communities consider the tradeoffs associated with different school sizes and make choices that meet local preferences for locations within walking distance of students, potential for sports fields, school design, and connections to neighborhoods. State school construction and siting policies should support flexibility for localities. Takeaway for practice: Local and regional planners should work with school facility planners to conduct exercises and charettes to help each community determine how to realize its own vision of community schools. Research support: The School of Architecture at the University of Virginia and the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported this research.