School travel mode choice and the characteristics of the urban built environment: The case of Helsinki, Finland

Broberg, Anna; Sarjala, Satu

doi:10.1016/j.tranpol.2014.10.011

Cited by 100 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…In Bogota 90% of the children who attend public schools live within 2 km, 40 and in Helsinki 70% of the primary school students go to their nearest school. 41 In Bogotá, the District Education Department has a School Transportation Program targeted mainly to public schools from low socioeconomic levels with two main strategies. The first strategy promotes walking to school among children who live within 1 km of the school under the supervision of an adult.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…42 In Finland, most of the children attending public schools use an active mode of transport to go to school, and the municipalities provide free public transportation tickets for those children living within distances over 2 km; however, regardless of the mode of transport, Finnish children are very independent in their mobility. 41 In addition, Broyles et al (this issue) found that in Finland cycling provision features in schools, like cycle parking, cycle lanes and route signs for cyclists were highly prevalent (76-100%). Nonetheless, Finland differs significantly from Colombia, in car availability, safety and traffic accidents.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relationships between active school transport and adiposity indicators in school-age children from low-, middle- and high-income countries

et al. 2015

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OBJECTIVES:Within the global context of the nutrition and physical activity transition it is important to determine the relationship between adiposity and active school transport (AST) across different environmental and socio-cultural settings. The present study assessed the association between adiposity (that is, body mass index z-score (BMIz), obesity, percentage body fat (PBF), waist circumference) and AST in 12 country sites, in the International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE). METHODS: The analytical sample included 6797 children aged 9-11 years. Adiposity indicators included, BMIz calculated using reference data from the World Health Organization, obesity (BMIz ⩾ +2 s.d.), PBF measured using bioelectrical impedance and waist circumference. School travel mode was assessed by questionnaire and categorized as active travel versus motorized travel. Multilevel linear and non-linear models were used to estimate the magnitude of the associations between adiposity indicators and AST by country site and sex. RESULTS: After adjusting for age, sex, parental education and motorized vehicle availability, children who reported AST were less likely to be obese (odds ratio = 0.72, 95% confidence interval (0.60-0.87), P o0.001) and had a lower BMIz (−0.09, s.e.m. = 0.04, P = 0.013), PBF (least square means (LSM) 20.57 versus 21.23% difference − 0.66, s.e.m. = 0.22, P = 0.002) and waist circumference (LSM 63.73 cm versus 64.63 cm difference − 0.90, s.e.m. = 0.26, P = 0.001) compared with those who reported motorized travel. Overall, associations between obesity and AST did not differ by country (P = 0.279) or by sex (P = 0.571). CONCLUSIONS: AST was associated with lower measures of adiposity in this multinational sample of children. Such findings could inform global efforts to prevent obesity among school-age children.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between active school transport and adiposity indicators in school-age children from low-, middle- and high-income countries

et al. 2015

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“…In congruence with Helbich et al (2016), two space-syntax-based measures were employed, namely the closeness and the betweenness indices (Cooper, 2015). While the former represents how difficult it is to reach all other locations j from a given location i, the latter refers to the business of a street segment utilizing the shortest path to go from location i to all other network locations j. Diversity is central for urban design and considered as a Shannon entropy index for land-use and building usage (Broberg & Sarjala, 2015). Land-use data stem from the Landelijk Grondgebruiksbestand Nederland 6 (LGN; Hazeu, Schuiling, Van Dorland, Oldengarm, & Gijsbertse, 2010) for the year 2007/08, while the building usage data were extracted from the cadastre (Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen; BAG, 2013).…”

Section: Urban Form and Traffic Safety Exposuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The common practice is to model them as individual covariates (Schlossberg et al, 2006;Broberg & Sarjala, 2015). But since these variables tend to be strongly associated, multicollinearity arises, which is a problem that has thus far been disregarded (Wong et al, 2011;Lu et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To the best of our knowledge, it is the first comparative study of these three urban form utilizations and how they affect model interpretation. While several Anglophone studies have been published (e.g., Kerr et al, 2006;McMillan, 2007;Noland, Park, Von Hagen, & Chatman, 2014;Oliver et al, 2014;Mitra, Papaioannou, & Habib, 2016;Woldeamanuel, 2016), European studies (e.g., M€ uller et al, 2008;Broberg & Sarjala, 2015;Kaplan et al, 2016) are underrepresented (Lu et al, 2014). We focused on the Netherlands, a country that is highly attuned to walking and cycling (Pucher & Buehler, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Children's school commuting in the Netherlands: Does it matter how urban form is incorporated in mode choice models?

Helbich

2016

International Journal of Sustainable Transportation

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Walking and cycling to school is environmentally sustainable and increases children's physical activity. Although it is known that the built environment influences children's travel behavior, there is scant knowledge of how urban form along children's commuting routes affects walking and cycling separately, or of how to incorporate urban form exposures in transport mode choice models. This research investigated (a) the associations between children's transport mode choice and urban form correlates en route, and (b) the consequences of different urban form operationalizations (i.e., individual variables, composite measure, and principal components [PCs]). Global Positioning System devices were used to track 623 trips to and from school made by Dutch children aged 6-11 years. Urban form exposures were derived with geographic information systems, and their relationships with mode choice were tested with mixed multinomial logit models in a cross-sectional research design. Differences between the number of associated urban form variables, their magnitudes, and their significance levels were found for both walking and cycling, independent of the operationalization. Urban form was most influential for walking, whereas distance-related effects were absorbed when modeled as PCs. The highest model fit was achieved through PCs; the composite measure resulted in the lowest fit. To maximize the effectiveness of planning and health interventions, walking and cycling must be targeted separately. Policymakers should avoid "one-fits-all policies," which are deemed to be inefficient. Because urban form affects model interpretation and fit, careful attention should be paid to how urban form is modeled, and sensitivity analyses should be performed.

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Walking school bus line routing for efficiency, health and walkability: A multi‐objective optimisation approach

Wang

Kang

et al. 2023

Multi Criteria Decision Anal

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Walking School Bus (WSB) has been recognised as an innovative solution to promote walking to school, bringing a wide spectrum of benefits, including: health benefits from the physical exercise, social skills and traffic reduction. To facilitate the success of WSB, one vital element is its route planning, which directly affects the catchment for the service and the realisation of all the potential benefits. Previously, time has been the only factor that has been considered in WSB routing problems. Other important factors including air quality, safety and comfort will also be considered in this paper. Air quality along a WSB route is important to help realise the health benefits of walking. Traffic safety has been the biggest barrier to walking to school and must be addressed in planning a WSB route. Ensuring children have an enjoyable and comfortable experience is vital for the sustainability and success of WSB. A walking network is introduced to enable modelling pedestrian movements in detail, including walking movements on different sides of the road and crossing movements. This approach enables detailed route-based analysis to assess the localised effect of air quality on pollutant dose. We define walkability as a measure of children's needs in safety and comfort, which can also be assessed in detail on each route. We propose a multi-objective optimisation model to generate efficient WSB routes with three objectives representing the potential benefits of WSB: (1) to minimise time; (2) to minimise pollutant dose; and (3) to maximise walkability. We apply our model to a selected school in Bradford in the UK, generating three WSB lines following efficient routes. These lines go through a predetermined sequence of 'WSB Stops', with the final stop as the school. All children within the catchment area will be able to join a WSB within 1-2 min walk from their home to the nearest stop. Our multi-objective WSB route planning model is highly transferable to any selected school in any WSB targeted area. Planners will be able to select a combination of WSB lines to offer, based on the requirement of coverage area and resource availability.

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School travel mode choice and the characteristics of the urban built environment: The case of Helsinki, Finland

Cited by 100 publications

References 38 publications

Relationships between active school transport and adiposity indicators in school-age children from low-, middle- and high-income countries

Relationships between active school transport and adiposity indicators in school-age children from low-, middle- and high-income countries

Children's school commuting in the Netherlands: Does it matter how urban form is incorporated in mode choice models?

Walking school bus line routing for efficiency, health and walkability: A multi‐objective optimisation approach

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