IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/transp/v43y2016i1p159-175.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Costs of school transportation: quantifying the fiscal impacts of encouraging walking and bicycling for school travel

Author

Listed:
  • Noreen McDonald
  • Ruth Steiner
  • W. Palmer
  • Allison Bullock
  • Virginia Sisiopiku
  • Benjamin Lytle

Abstract

National governments have provided subsidies for investments in increasing the safety and attractiveness of walking and biking to school. Evaluations of Safe Routes to School initiatives have found that they have been effective at changing behavior and reducing injuries. However, there has been little attention to the impacts of these programs on pupil transportation costs. This analysis assesses the potential economic benefits of Safe Routes to School programs in the US context by estimating the annual costs of using motorized transport for short trips to schools, examining real-world examples of the costs savings of SRTS programs, and evaluating land use impacts on school transportation costs using a simulation analysis of school bus routes. We find that there is potential for school districts and families to reduce transport expenditures through public sector investments in walking and biking infrastructure near schools. We also find that land use context matters and the most cost-effective investments would benefit schools where large numbers of children live within walking distance. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Suggested Citation

  • Noreen McDonald & Ruth Steiner & W. Palmer & Allison Bullock & Virginia Sisiopiku & Benjamin Lytle, 2016. "Costs of school transportation: quantifying the fiscal impacts of encouraging walking and bicycling for school travel," Transportation, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 159-175, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:transp:v:43:y:2016:i:1:p:159-175
    DOI: 10.1007/s11116-014-9569-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11116-014-9569-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11116-014-9569-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Noreen C. McDonald & Ruth L. Steiner & Chanam Lee & Tori Rhoulac Smith & Xuemei Zhu & Yizhao Yang, 2014. "Impact of the Safe Routes to School Program on Walking and Bicycling," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 80(2), pages 153-167, April.
    2. Mark A. Moore & Anthony E. Boardman & Aidan R. Vining & David L. Weimer & David H. Greenberg, 2004. "“Just give me a number!” Practical values for the social discount rate," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4), pages 789-812.
    3. McMillan, Tracy E., 2007. "The relative influence of urban form on a child's travel mode to school," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 69-79, January.
    4. Staunton, C.E. & Hubsmith, D. & Kallins, W., 2003. "Promoting Safe Walking and Biking to School: The Marin County Success Story," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 93(9), pages 1431-1434.
    5. Ragland, David R & Pande, Swati & Bigham, John & Cooper, Jill F, 2014. "Ten Years Later: Examining the Long-Term Impact of the California Safe Routes to School Program," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt8m59g6vx, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    6. Cavill, Nick & Kahlmeier, Sonja & Rutter, Harry & Racioppi, Francesca & Oja, Pekka, 2008. "Economic analyses of transport infrastructure and policies including health effects related to cycling and walking: A systematic review," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 291-304, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benti Geleta Buli & Annika Tillander & Terence Fell & Katarina Bälter, 2022. "Active Commuting and Healthy Behavior among Adolescents in Neighborhoods with Varying Socioeconomic Status: The NESLA Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(7), pages 1-13, March.
    2. Houde, Maxime & Apparicio, Philippe & Séguin, Anne-Marie, 2018. "A ride for whom: Has cycling network expansion reduced inequities in accessibility in Montreal, Canada?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 9-21.
    3. Maria Cieśla & Elżbieta Macioszek, 2022. "The Perspective Projects Promoting Sustainable Mobility by Active Travel to School on the Example of the Southern Poland Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-18, August.
    4. Karel Frömel & Dorota Groffik & Josef Mitáš & Jan Dygrýn & Petr Valach & Michal Šafář, 2020. "Active Travel of Czech and Polish Adolescents in Relation to Their Well-Being: Support for Physical Activity and Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(6), pages 1-13, March.
    5. Deanna M. Hoelscher & Leigh Ann Ganzar & Deborah Salvo & Harold W. Kohl & Adriana Pérez & Henry Shelton Brown & Sarah S. Bentley & Erin E. Dooley & Amir Emamian & Casey P. Durand, 2022. "Effects of Large-Scale Municipal Safe Routes to School Infrastructure on Student Active Travel and Physical Activity: Design, Methods, and Baseline Data of the Safe Travel Environment Evaluation in Te," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-17, February.
    6. Scheiner, Joachim, 2016. "School trips in Germany: Gendered escorting practices," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 76-92.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Noreen C. McDonald & Ruth L. Steiner & W. Mathew Palmer & Allison N. Bullock & Virginia P. Sisiopiku & Benjamin F. Lytle, 2016. "Costs of school transportation: quantifying the fiscal impacts of encouraging walking and bicycling for school travel," Transportation, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 159-175, January.
    2. Hazel Williams-Roberts & Bonnie Jeffery & Shanthi Johnson & Nazeem Muhajarine, 2015. "The Effectiveness of Healthy Community Approaches on Positive Health Outcomes in Canada and the United States," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-21, December.
    3. Ermagun, Alireza & Samimi, Amir, 2015. "Promoting active transportation modes in school trips," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 203-211.
    4. Chen, Peng & Jiao, Junfeng & Xu, Mengyuan & Gao, Xu & Bischak, Chris, 2018. "Promoting active student travel: A longitudinal study," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 265-274.
    5. McDonald, Noreen C., 2008. "Household interactions and children’s school travel: the effect of parental work patterns on walking and biking to school," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 324-331.
    6. Noreen McDonald, 2008. "Children’s mode choice for the school trip: the role of distance and school location in walking to school," Transportation, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 23-35, January.
    7. Buckley, Aaron & Lowry, Michael B. & Brown, Helen & Barton, Benjamin, 2013. "Evaluating safe routes to school events that designate days for walking and bicycling," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 294-300.
    8. Rezwana Rafiq & Suman Kumar Mitra, 2020. "Shared school transportation: determinants of carpooling as children’s school travel mode in California," Transportation, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 1339-1357, June.
    9. Macridis, Soultana & Garcia Bengoechea, Enrique & McComber, Alex M. & Jacobs, Judi & Macaulay, Ann C., 2016. "Active transportation to support diabetes prevention: Expanding school health promotion programming in an Indigenous community," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 99-108.
    10. Brachman, Micah L. & Church, Richard L., 2019. "Optimizing Safe Routes to School," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 26-33.
    11. Amanda Fernandes & Mònica Ubalde-López & Tiffany C. Yang & Rosemary R. C. McEachan & Rukhsana Rashid & Léa Maitre & Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen & Martine Vrijheid, 2023. "School-Based Interventions to Support Healthy Indoor and Outdoor Environments for Children: A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-24, January.
    12. Alireza Ermagun & Amir Samimi, 2018. "Mode choice and travel distance joint models in school trips," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(6), pages 1755-1781, November.
    13. Elias, Wafa & Katoshevski-Cavari, Rachel, 2014. "The role of socio-economic and environmental characteristics in school-commuting behavior: A comparative study of Jewish and Arab children in Israel," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 79-87.
    14. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    15. Jasmina Ćetković & Slobodan Lakić & Angelina Živković & Miloš Žarković & Radoje Vujadinović, 2021. "Economic Analysis of Measures for GHG Emission Reduction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-25, February.
    16. Pucher, John & Buehler, Ralph & Seinen, Mark, 2011. "Bicycling renaissance in North America? An update and re-appraisal of cycling trends and policies," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 45(6), pages 451-475, July.
    17. Richard G. Newell & William A. Pizer & Brian C. Prest, 2023. "The Shadow Price of Capital: Accounting for Capital Displacement in Benefit-Cost Analysis," NBER Chapters, in: Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, volume 5, pages 49-69, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Rothstein, Jesse & Rouse, Cecilia Elena, 2011. "Constrained after college: Student loans and early-career occupational choices," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1-2), pages 149-163, February.
    19. Tyler Atkinson & David Luttrell & Harvey Rosenblum, 2013. "How bad was it? The costs and consequences of the 2007–09 financial crisis," Staff Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Jul.
    20. Yizhao Yang & Steve Abbott & Marc Schlossberg, 2012. "The Influence of School Choice Policy on Active School Commuting: A Case Study of a Middle-Sized School District in Oregon," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(8), pages 1856-1874, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:transp:v:43:y:2016:i:1:p:159-175. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.