Urban School Travel - Understanding the Critical Factors Affecting Parent's Choices

摘要

Travelling to and from school forms mobility habits and travel behavior aspects of students from a very young age, also adopted in later life. Parents are the key players of the whole mode choice process as in most cases they are the ones to decide how and by which transport mode their children will complete their everyday school trips. Understanding parents' perceptions on different travel modes and studying the motives behind the mode choice decision in school trips, is a rather essential issue as it may provide useful information to policy-makers, transport and spatial planners on how to overcome possible barriers and difficulties in order to satisfactory cover all students' future mobility needs. The paper provides an extensive literature review regarding a wide range of factors found to influence students' travel, following a statistical exploratory factor analysis of a questionnaire survey took place in Thessaloniki, Greece. The initial analysis of the sample identifies key themes while it also develops a comprehensive picture of caregivers' experiences about travel mode choice to school in a typical Greek urban environment. Some interesting findings verify that socio-economic and household demographic factors, built-environment variables, and parents' attitudes regarding their daily trips and mobility habits, are important factors affecting the school mode choice procedure.