MnDOT Walk / Bicycle Zone Concept

In addition to gathering community input, the team conducted an assessment of the community’s current conditions and policies in order to identify opportunities to advance walking and bicycling to school or programs that support active transportation. The team conducted observations to understand how many students walk and bike to and from school, what routes are most-traveled, their behaviors as pedestrians and bicyclists, and the interactions between pedestrians and motorists. In addition, the team conducted a separate walk-audit of the entire community to survey its geography and infrastructure. During the walkaudit, the team recorded sidewalk conditions, child-friendly opportunities to cross streets, along with vehicle speeds, and potential trail and sidewalk connections.

Furthermore, the team helped administer the National Centers for Safe Routes to School (National Centers) student travel tally survey and a separate parent survey. The student travel tally form is used to count the number of students arriving to and departing from school by various modes. The parent survey collects information from parents of K-8th graders about how their children travel to and from school, their attitudes towards active transportation, and finally barriers that prevent their children from participating in active transportation modes of travel. The results were then entered into the National Centers’ database. These assessment tools illustrate the range of current barriers and opportunities, which is the foundation of the identified recommendations. These surveys are to be done yearly with continuing WCI assistance so that possible trends in student travel behavior and parent perceptions can be identified and recorded with the National Centers for Safe Routes to School database. Understanding the possible changes in student travel trends will give school, school district, and WCI staff the information they need to be able to determine if the goal of getting more children to walk and bike to and from school is being met.

All of this information was reviewed by the SRTS team and analyzed by the staff at WCI to provide a list of recommendations to improve walking and biking to and from school, structured around the active transportation planning principles of the “5 E’s”.

M N D O T W A L K / B I C Y C L E Z O N E C O N C E P T

Children are more likely to walk or bicycle to school if they live within the school “walk/bicycle zone.” MnDOT defines this as “the area within the school’s enrollment boundary from which students can realistically walk or bike to school.” MnDOT guidelines generally assume a distance of up to o.5 miles for children in grades PreK-5, 1 mile for grades 6-8, and 1.5 miles for grades 9-12.13

13 Minnesota DOT. Safe Routes to School: Neighborhood Assessment Guide. September, 2012. Available at http://www.dot.state.mn.us/saferoutes/pdf/srtschecklist.pdf . Accessed on November 16, 2015.

Chapter 2: About Safe Routes to School (SRTS) | P a g e 31