I was looking at research from America, trying to get a sense of how many high school students cycle to school. I found a small, but very interesting study from Davis, California. It specifically looked at what are the major dis/encouragements for high school students in relation to biking to school.
Problem: The dwindling number of students who actively travel to school is a logical growing concern in the US. The article states that in 1969, 87% of all trips less than 1.6kms to school were on bike or foot, whereas in 2001, less than 1% of students aged 5-15 were biking to school. The authors are bold enough to argue that such travel habit changes – which once initiated in childhood, are continued into adulthood; have a direct negative impact on wider social issues such as the national obesity rates and climate change.
Response: To try and combat low active travel to school, a US Federal Initiative called ‘Safe Routes to School,’ was implemented in 2005, at a cost of US$612 million to help promote safe walking and bike access to schools. Since then, a number of studies have assessed the results and effectiveness – and these are the studies I have been looking at this week.
This study caught my eye for a few key reasons. Firstly, it specifically focused on high school students (AU years 10-12), whereas most other US research on active student mobility concentrates on junior high (years 7-9) students. Secondly, this research solely looked at biking, as opposed to most others, which considered walking and biking together.
Findings: Here are a few highlights of interest from this Study.
Gender: Overall, more male students ride than female students.
Age: Cycling to school rates decreased with (increased) age and grade levels – meaning the older you get and the higher your grade level, you ride less to school.
License: Getting a drivers license cuts the already low cycling rate in half again.
Riders: Those who do ride to school, often use their bike to ride to many places regularly, not just school.
Compound factors: Being female, having access to a car and having a drivers license, had the biggest impact on lowering cycling results.
Convenience: Many students said that they used a car not a bike as they left campus for lunch and needed to be back in time for afternoon classes (from what little I know about US high school canteens, I wouldn’t eat there either!)
Portability: Carrying books and school gear was highlighted as a major issue for students who said that transporting ‘stuff’ to and from school was a significant consideration for biking or not.
Parental Influence: Parents had a greater influence on cycling choices than peers, but this is not surprising as parents provide an access choice for non-biking by readily chauffeuring or allowing licensed students to use family cars.
Most surprising finding: For me the most surprising comment was that there was a link between parental education levels and the likelihood of bicycling to school. The authors observed that ‘having a parent with at least a bachelor degree increased the odds of bicycling, most likely reflecting both high education levels and high bicycle commuting levels among parents who work at the university’ (p.76). I found this very interesting, as I had never stopped to fully consider a link between cycling and educational levels and have not found other studies that have claimed such a connection either. I will keep an eye on the literature and see if this is echoed elsewhere.
Is there a connection between higher education levels and cycling?
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Emond, C. R., & Handy, S. L. (2012). Factors associated with bicycling to high school: Insights from Davis, CA. Journal of Transport Geography, 20(1), 71-79. doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2011.07.008
