School-travel by public transit: Rethinking active transportation

Abstract

BackgroundWalking and cycling to school is a source of physical activity (PA). Little is known about public transit use for travel to school and whether it is a physically active alternative to car use for those who live too far to walk.PurposeTo describe school-trip characteristics, including PA, across travel modes and to assess the association between PA with walk distance.MethodsHigh school students (13.3 ± 0.7 years, 37% female) from Downtown Vancouver wore accelerometers (GT3X+) and global positioning systems (GPS) (QStarz BT-Q1000XT) for 7 days in October 2012. We included students with valid school-trip data (n = 100 trips made by n = 42 students). We manually identified school-trips and mode from GPS and calculated trip duration, distance, speed, and trip-based moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA; min). We assessed between-mode differences and associations using multilevel regression analyses (spring 2014).ResultsStudents accrued 9.1 min (±5.1) of trip-based MVPA, which was no different between walk and transit trips (p = 0.961). Walking portions of transit trips were similar to walking trips in terms of distance (p = 0.265) and duration (p = 0.493). Walk distance was associated with MVPA in a dose–response manner.ConclusionsPublic transit use can contribute meaningfully toward daily PA. Thus, school policies that promote active school-travel should consider including public transit.

Destinations That Older Adults Experience Within Their GPS Activity Spaces

“…We cleaned GPS data and generated activity spaces using methodology detailed elsewhere (Hirsch, Winters, et al, 2014; Voss, Winters, Frazer, & McKay, 2015; Voss, Winters, Frazer, & McKay, 2014). In short, GPS data were downloaded as .csv files (QStarz data viewer).…”

A Scoping Review of Children and Adolescents’ Active Travel in Ireland

“…Regular physical activity (PA) participation reduces the risk of disease, in addition to providing a multitude of benefits that help individuals sleep better, feel better, and perform daily tasks more easily [1]. These benefits can be achieved through a variety of PA modalities, and active travel (i.e., using self-propelled mediums, such as walking or cycling, some or all the way to a destination) can contribute as much as 30% towards meeting the recommended daily levels of PA for health [2,3]. A recent PA review [4] identified positive associations between active travel and health outcomes across 68 studies.…”

Contribution of Walking to School to Individual and Population Moderate-Vigorous Intensity Physical Activity: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…If walking to school is going to make a much greater contribution 249 to population MVPA in future, the prevalence, duration, and MVPA content of 250 walking to school must all be increased substantially. A discussion of policy and 251 strategy options and arguments for improving surveillance of active commuting to 252 school, and for increasing the prevalence and MVPA content of active commuting to 253 school, would go beyond the scope of the present study, but these issues are dealt with 254 elsewhere (31,42,49,51,52). Researchers and policymakers should also consider 255 whether focusing on domains of physical activity other than active commuting to 256 school might be more effective in the promotion of population MVPA (18).…”