School Travel

Abstract

Over the past half-century, rates of active school travel have declined across the industrialized West, and the number of children driven to school by automobile has increased. Over the same period, the prevalence of childhood obesity has increased. Lack of physical activity may be partly to blame for recent obesity trends. School travel is one opportunity to establish daily physical activity through walking or cycling. The purpose of this study was to examine how social and environmental barriers related to the mode of travel and children's independent mobility in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, Ontario, Canada. Computer-aided telephone interviews were conducted with 1,016 parents and guardians of elementary school children. Geographic information system analysis was performed to examine the objective measures of the environment. Binary logistic regression tested the association between social, individual, and objective neighborhood characteristics and school travel outcomes. Distance was related to the mode of travel: students who lived farther from school were less likely to walk. Children who lived in a residential development constructed before 1960 were more likely to walk to school; this finding suggested that certain features within these older neighborhoods promoted walking. The density of intersections was related to walking, but living in an area with a higher population density discouraged unescorted walking to school. Finally, the age of the child influenced the odds of walking independently, but the relationship varied by environment. Children were able to undertake independent travel at a younger age when living in an older neighborhood. Keywords: SR2S