School-Based Travel: A Mobility Assessment

摘要

This project contributes to developing a technical infrastructure to support the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Program, specifically to monitor its growth and to evaluate its effectiveness. Since its inception in 2005, the SRTS program mandated by SAFETEA-LU has benefited about 6,489 schools The National Center for Safe Routes to School keeps track of these schools by compiling tallies of children walking or biking to school and by collecting parent surveys. Each state works to have a fair and effective distribution of resources to the neediest schools. This proposal adds to an on-going Pooled Fund project spearheaded by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to support information exchanges and research between several participating states, including Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. Over the past two years, the PI and her team have been working with WSDOT to provide technical support to members of the Pooled Fund. This proposal is to fill a relatively small but very important gap in the current knowledge about SRTS: that is the lack of data on the schools specific locations. Having spatial data on the location of schools will facilitate the selection of SRTS projects and the monitoring the SRTS programs over time. We propose to geocode schools nationwide in relation to existing transportation facilities. This would enable state SRTS coordinators to quickly evaluate the schools proximity to different types of transportation facilities and to establish their related level of exposure to traffic. Geocoded schools would also allow coordinators to analyze the characteristics of the neighborhoods around the schools based on spatial data that are readily available from the US Census.