Question – On most days, how does your child arrive and leave for school? A comparison of a child’s typical travel mode of arrival at and departure from school, as reported by parents, is shown in Figure 38 and Table 8. The survey is structured so that parents can give an answer for both how their child arrives at school and then leaves from school. Based on the parent responses, the school bus was the most common mode of travel both to and from school representing 64 percent and 72 percent of all trips, respectively. The second most frequently chosen mode for travel to and from school was the family vehicle at 31 percent and 22 percent, followed by walking at three and four percent. Students riding a bike represented just one percent of the travel mode share in both the mornings and afternoons. There is a slight change in travel modes chosen for school departure compared to arrival. There is a switch from the family vehicle to the school bus and walking in the afternoon. It is believed that this mode switch happens because it is easy for parents to drive children to school as they are headed to work. In the afternoon, parents are at work when students are dismissed and students can take their time getting home. Bike mode share for students does not vary between mornings and afternoons as it stands to reason that students will need to ride their bikes home if they wish to ride to school the next day. These mode share results with the switch away from family vehicle in the afternoon are typical of what has been observed at other schools and school districts in west central Minnesota. When compared to the 2013 national SRTS combined walk and bike mode share numbers of 15.2 percent in the morning and 18.4 percent in the afternoon, the percentages of elementary students walking and bicycling to and from the New York Mills School (four percent morning, five percent afternoon) are below the average.
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The National Center for Safe Routes to School. Trends in Walking and Bicycling to School from 2007 to 2013. March, 2015. Available at http://saferoutesinfo.org/sites/default/files/SurveyTrends_2007-13_final1.pdf. Accessed on April 1, 2016.
Chapter 8: Standardized SRTS Survey Analysis | P a g e 91
