Abstract
To encourage students to walk and cycle to school and ensure their health and safety, it is essential to provide safe and operationally efficient infrastructure around schools. This study used an audit tool to assess the infrastructure and environment around schools in the city of Doha, Qatar, with a particular emphasis on active transport (walking and cycling). The aim was to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Twenty-two schools with varied education levels were assessed. Among all assessed categories, active transport items scored the lowest, requiring the most improvements. A detailed analysis was conducted based on school type (elementary, primary, high, and mixed-schools) and revealed similar results except for elementary schools (scored acceptable for active transport). The study revealed that adding bike lanes, installing bicycle parking, and providing good separation of travel modes are the most needed improvements at school sites. In summary, improving active transport could significantly improve the overall quality of the infrastructure around schools in Qatar. Such improvements could greatly encourage more school children to walk and cycle to school instead of being primarily dropped-off and picked up by their parents’ vehicles or school buses.
Highlights
As indispensable institutions in any community, schools require well-planned and well-connected infrastructure
The tool has well-defined scales to convert qualitative evaluation of existing school sites into a quantitative assessment. It includes a 30-item checklist categorized into four domains: school site assessment, road network assessment, parking/loading assessment, and active transport assessment
Th used tool is more comprehensive than the few school audit tools available in the literature [24,26]
Summary
As indispensable institutions in any community, schools require well-planned and well-connected infrastructure. Selecting appropriate school sites and ensuring safe routes and efficient school designs within communities could improve children’s school performance and instill in them lifelong healthy habits, such as active transportation [1]. Studies have shown that high street connectivity combined with low traffic exposure could increase neighborhood walkability and encourage more children to walk or cycle regularly to school [4,5]. High traffic exposure and low street connectivity have the opposite effect [6,7]. It is, essential to provide environmentally safe and operationally efficient infrastructure around schools to ensure children’s safety while walking or cycling to school
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