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Abstract
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Introduction
Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs aim to promote children's active school commuting and to improve traffic safety around schools. Evaluation studies mostly have focused on travel modal shift to active modes. However, traffic safety improvement has been less studied, although it was one of the most important program goals and it could be equally important to policy makers and practitioners. We aim to evaluate whether schools participating in a SRTS program have safety improvement.
Methods
Using a two-group (case-control) pretest-posttest study design, we analyzed SRTS funding in 2008 and 2013 in New York State. Analysis of Covariance models were established to examine if SRTS funding was associated with changes in collision outcomes with adjusting school demographics, area-based socioeconomic characteristics, and built environments around schools. Collision outcomes were vehicle collision count and risk (count adjusted by traffic volume) around school before and after SRTS funding.
Results
In total, 2363 schools were examined. We found that the 2013 SRTS programs were not significantly associated with a decrease in collision involving school-age pedestrians or bicyclists occurring within a 0.5-mile distance from schools during school hours.
Conclusions
The 2013 SRTS funding was not associated with collision reduction, suggesting no evident effect of SRTS on collision reduction among school-age pedestrians and bicyclists.
Language: en |