Understanding the role of urban form in explaining transportation and recreational walking among children in a logistic GWR model: A spatial analysis in Istanbul,Turkey

This study aims to examine associations between urban form factors generally, and street network configuration in particular, and walking for different purposes among children in Istanbul, Turkey. Parents of randomly selected students (ages 12–16) at 20 middle schools (N = 917) completed questionnaires about their socio-economic characteristics and the frequency of their children's walking for recreational and for transportation purposes in their neighbourhood during a typical day. The environment around 400 m of participants' homes was evaluated through GIS-based parcel-level land-use data and segment-based street connectivity measures calculated using space syntax techniques. Logistic geographically weighted regression models were estimated to measure the desired associations while adjusting for socio-economic characteristics. Results demonstrate a marginal association between urban form measures and walking behaviour but only in certain peripheral parts of the city. More importantly, increased directional accessibility, which identifies the extent to which more street length is accessible within few direction changes, is associated with higher odds of recreational walking in particular areas where a strong differentiation between scales of street connectivity structure is evident such as a supergrid of primary roads with inserted organic local streets. In addition, children residing in neighbourhoods with reduced residential density and increased commercial and recreational activities are more likely to walk for transportation purposes. The findings of this study demonstrate that the one-size-fits-all approach may not effectively encourage walking. Urban areas tend to have varying qualities that need to be handled uniquely, and therefore targeted rather than blanket interventions regarding the design of neighbourhoods around schools and homes may be beneficial in supporting walking behaviour of children.     

Children's active travel and independent mobility in four countries: Development,social contributing trends and measures

In many countries a decline in children's active and independent mobility, like walking and cycling is registered. In this paper the development of children's mobility in Denmark, Finland, Great Britain and Norway is compared to examine differences and similarities in these countries. Accessible data are used, which implies that not all of them are directly comparable, but they are employed as indicators of development. The trends are the same in these four countries, an increase in car use and decrease in bicycling and walking. Distance to school has increased, both as a result of bigger units and more children in private schools. Traffic is an important reason for taking children to school by car, but convenience for the parents is also part of it. Organized leisure activities has also contributed to less walking and cycling, in addition to more time pressure in families, increased access to car(s) and easier access to parents as a ‘transport service’ by the help of the mobile phone. The measures that different countries use in trying to meet the challenges of children's mobility tend to focus on the school trip and most often on traffic safety, both at national and local levels.     

An explanation of the relationship between adults’ work trip mode and children’s school trip mode through the Heckman approach

Most studies on children’s travel hypothesize that the characteristics of children, households, schools, and neighborhoods exogenously affect their travel mode to school. This study makes an additional assumption that children’s mode to school and household adults’ travel mode to work are interrelated because of a lifestyle choice made by parents and caregivers. With this assumption, Heckman probit models were used with data from the 2009 US National Household Travel Survey to predict household adults’ travel mode to work and children’s travel mode to school jointly. It found strong evidence that household adults’ decision to drive to work significantly increases the probability of children being dropped off at school and decreases their likelihood of walking and bicycling, but not vice versa. As adults’ mode choice is more fundamental in the household decision-making process, the study suggests that children’s mode choice studies should not ignore how parents or caregivers travel to work.     

Accessibility evaluations for nighttime walking and bicycling for low-income shift workers

This paper addresses an important issue related to nighttime commuting of low-income shift workers who walk and/or bike to their workplace using public transit. A shift worker is anyone who follows a work schedule that is outside of the typical daytime working hours of a business day and commute after dark - by walking or bicycling to a transit stop. However, poor visibility conditions on sidewalks and bicycle lanes often thwart safety of their walking and bicycling activities. Therefore, this paper develops two simple scores - nighttime accessibility score for walking (NASW) and nighttime accessibility for bicycling (NASB) - for evaluating nighttime infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclist. The scores consider the employment data, travel time and the physical distribution of streetlight poles along the sidewalks and bicycle lanes. Data from the city of El Paso in Texas is used to demonstrate the applicability of the two scores. Employment data from three prominent service industry sectors known to employ low-income shift workers – i) Retail Trade, ii) Accommodation and Food Services, and iii) Health Care and Social Assistance – are used for demonstration purposes. It is observed that amongst the three sectors analyzed, both NASW and NASB values are higher for regions in El Paso with low-income employment concentrations from the Health Care and Social Assistance sector. It is also observed that some prominent regions in north-east, south-east and west of El Paso need improvements in streetlight systems, sidewalks and bicycle network to facilitate walking and bicycling amongst low-income shift workers employed in Retail Trade, and Accommodation and Food Services industry sectors to access transit stops at night.     

Travel behavior of university students who live on campus: A case study of a rural university in Asia

With their irregular class schedules and considerable freedom in the campus environment, university students are an example of a social group that tends to have complex and unique travel behavior. This study examined travel patterns of 130 students who study and live on campus in a rural university of Thailand. All survey participants completed a travel diary for seven consecutive days in a typical school week. Other than overall travel patterns, such as trip generation, mode split, distance traveled, and travel time, this study also investigated the differences in traffic patterns of four student groups, categorized by their gender and whether they own a private vehicle or not. It was found that students of both genders appeared to have similar travel patterns in all aspects. Whether they own a private vehicle does not appear to impact daily trip generation nor the total distance traveled of the students, but it does have an effect on the travel modes used by students. Those students who own a private vehicle mostly rely on driving the vehicle, while those who do not own a vehicle rely on three modes of travel: primarily being a passenger on or in a friend’s private vehicle, and to a lesser extent, driving a friend’s vehicle, and taking a bus (the only form of public transport on the campus). The results indicate a high social interdependency among university students, which makes the development of a model to simulate travel behavior of university students a complicated task.     

Spatial and socio-demographic determinants of South East Queensland students’ school cycling

The low prevalence of Australian students’ utilitarian school cycling could be attributed to the varied and context specific demographic, socio-economic and spatial school travel mode choice determinants. Travel distance is universally important for school cycling and is reliant amongst related home and school spatial proximity factors on a student’s choice of schools. This paper, primarily based on school students’ travel data extracted from the 2009 South East Queensland Household Travel Survey (SEQHTS), examines comparative school cycling travel patterns, school catchment choices and the significant analytical determinants of cycling mode choices from within an urban regional Australian context. Students’ choice of a school external to that located within their designated State school catchment zone was associated with household attributes of parent/guardian employment location, number of income earners and ownership of private vehicles coupled with State school and catchment attributes. Noteworthy variations in school travel distances and modal splits were allied with school catchment choices. Adolescent male students from two parent households owning fewer than two cars and more than two bicycles, with parents/guardians commuting using non-motorised travel modes and resident in Census Collection Districts with conducive cycling environments, contributed largely to the one-way bi-directional primary and secondary school cycling mode shares. This prevalent student cyclist profile indicates the need for enhancements in student school cycling participation, through policies addressing both the spatial (built) and social environment which impact students’ personal and traffic safety coupled with utilitarian cycling image enhancements. Concerted efforts to bolster cycling amongst student segments with current low cycling participation inclusive of females, students from single parent households and those with adequate access to private motorised travel modes may be necessary to further enhance school cycling mode shares. The paper makes a case for individualised targeted travel interventions informed by segregated mode choice determinant analysis for respective primary and secondary school types and directions of school travel.     

School commuting: the relationship between energy consumption and urban form

A large amount of research in the past has focused on the relationships between the energy consumption for home-to-work travel and land-use patterns. However, little is known about children’s mobility. This paper analyses the energy consumption, travel distances and mode choices for school commuting based on two decennial surveys in Belgium. The results highlight the following: (1) mobility behaviours have evolved drastically over the past decades for school commuting, an evolution that cannot be entirely related to land-use variables, (2) the energy consumption for school commuting is strongly dependent upon the school level, and (3) the links between land-use patterns and energy consumption for school commuting are different than those highlighted within the literature between urban forms and home-to-work commutes. The concentration of secondary schools and tertiary institutions in urban centres induces higher energy consumption rates, whereas the decentralisation of nursery and primary schools across the entire territory leads to very low local energy consumption and increased walking and cycling. These results provide a better understanding of school commuting within the European context and could guide future policies focused on transport energy consumption at the local scale.     

Perceptions of cycling among high school students and their parents

Cycling is a healthy, low-cost, and low-carbon alternative to motorized transport. As a relatively fast active mode of transport, cycling can overcome the distance barrier of walking, while also providing cardiovascular exercise and reducing demand for motor vehicle travel. The “cycling renaissance” has seen an increase in the number of cyclists in urban spaces, and there is evidence of increased investment in cycling infrastructure and cycle skills training in some places. Yet the number of high school students cycling to school is declining in many industrialized countries. Transport to school is a major contributor to daily traffic congestion, resulting in both local and global environmental concerns, and high school students have been relatively overlooked in research to date. In this paper, we present empirical material from a qualitative study of high school students and parents in Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Focus group sessions were conducted during 2014 and 2015 with students and parents separately, to explore their perceptions of modes of transport and transport to school decision making. Key findings relate to perceived safety, implicit messages, and social norms. We find that a complex range of factors contribute to perceptions of cycling safety, including features and perceptions of the built environment, traffic safety (including behaviors of other road users), previous cycling experiences (including accidents), and adolescents' cycling skills and on-road experiences. Overcoming concerns through behavioral and cultural interventions coupled with upskilling and thoughtful infrastructure may present a pathway to increasing rates of cycling.     

Learning never goes on holiday: an exploration of social tourism as a context for experiential learning

This paper applies Experiential Learning Theory to examine learning experiences of UK children during a holiday to assess the potential of holidays as influencing factors in educational achievement and attainment. The paper presents findings from a study undertaken with low-income families who had received financial support to take a holiday through the concept of social tourism. The study concludes that across a range of holiday styles, tourism can provide a context for experiential learning, and that the holiday can help to contextualise classroom learning through relearning. Finally, this form of social tourism, which included cooperation between schools, families, social and education services and social tourism organisations helped to improve relationships between the schools and families, which could be beneficial for children's learning in school. This paper calls for further research on the links between tourism and education.     

The influence of residential dissonance on physical activity and walking: evidence from the Montgomery County,MD, and Twin Cities,MN, areas

This study investigates to what extent a mismatch between residential preferences and actual residential locations is associated with residents’ physical activity and walking. The residents of Montgomery County, MD, and Twin Cities, MN, were classified into four residential subgroups, and their walking and physical activity outcomes were compared. The results showed that, for transport activity and walking outcomes, participants living in a urban location and preferring a urban environment were more likely to be active than those who lived in a suburban location and preferred a suburban environment. In a highly dense region, the influence of preferences might be overridden by the characteristics of neighborhood locations. With respect to recreation activity, no significant associations were found regarding neighborhood locations or preference for neighborhood environment.     

Passenger perceptions and the ideal urban bus journey experience

Respondents living close to a Quality Bus Corridor indicated which of 68 items were ‘Things I dislike or things that discourage me from using the bus in Edinburgh’. Eight underlying factors are reported: feeling unsafe (e.g., ‘Drunk people put me off travelling by bus at night’); preference for walking or cycling (e.g., ‘I prefer to walk’); problems with service provision (e.g., ‘No direct route’); unwanted arousal (e.g., ‘The buses are too crowded’); preference for car use (e.g., ‘I feel more in control when I drive’); cost (e.g., ‘The fares are too expensive’); disability and discomfort (e.g., ‘There are not enough hand rails inside the bus’); and self-image (e.g., ‘Travelling by bus does not create the right impression’). The influence of age, gender, household income, car availability and frequency of bus use on factor scores is reported. Analysis of write-in responses extended interpretation to include travelling by bus as a social behaviour in an exchange space and a formulation of the ideal, ‘hassle-free’, urban bus journey as pleasant/deactivated.     

School site walkability and active school transport – association,mediation and moderation

Increasing active school transport (AST) can improve population health, but its association with the urban form is not fully clear. This study investigated the association of an objective school walkability index with AST and how this association is mediated by the perceived physical and social environment. 1250 Danish students aged 11–13 years completed a commuting diary and a questionnaire. The walkability index was constituted of measures of road connectivity, traffic exposure and residential density. AST’s share in all school trips was 85.4% with little difference between genders. The school walkability index was significantly associated with AST (Medium vs. Low OR 2.68; High vs. Low OR 2.49). Adding the perceived physical and social environment variables improved the model prediction of AST, with no change in the association with the school walkability index. Furthermore, distance to school significantly moderated the association between the school walkability index and AST. This research confirms the association between the urban form surrounding schools and AST. Medium and highly walkable school sites in combination with a distance to school below 2 km, no speeding traffic and many paths in the neighborhood was associated with the highest odds ratio for AST.     

Commuting patterns in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro. What differences between formal and informal jobs?

Limiting commuting trips in major cities is important from the environmental, social and economic standpoints. In order to design policies that aim to change commuting practices it is, however, necessary to have acquired a good understanding of the trips in question and their determinants. However, these trips have been subjected to very little study in the cities of developing countries. This paper is concerned with the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area (RJMA), and sets out to test the influence of “classical” socioeconomic and spatial variables on the distance and duration of the commuting trips of the region's inhabitants, especially those with the lowest incomes. The main original feature of this research is that it includes jobs in the informal sector. The results show that, all other things being equal, commuting distances and times are shorter for the informal sector, and people walk more from their homes to their place of work because jobs in the informal sector are more dispersed than jobs in the formal sectors. The notable exception is personal and household services for which employees (who are mainly women) live a long way from the city center where wealthy families (and their jobs) are concentrated.     

A compact city for the wealthy? Employment accessibility inequalities between occupational classes in the London metropolitan region 2011

The prevalence of gentrification and housing marketisation processes in many cities points to increasingly wealthy inner-city areas and potentially greater population segregation by income. It is plausible that these trends are contributing to regional accessibility inequalities, though quantitative research testing this link is limited. This paper examines differences in employment accessibility between Standard Occupational Classification groups in the London Metropolitan Region for 2011 for car, transit, bus only and walking modes. Additionally, changes in occupational class populations 2006–2016 are considered, revealing continuing inner-city gentrification. Employment accessibility is calculated using cumulative measures, based on travel times from multi-modal network modelling. The results show that while car accessibility is relatively equal between occupational classes, public transport, bus and walk accessibility have significant inequalities favouring professional classes. Low income groups have lower accessibility for the most affordable bus and walk modes, and inequalities are greater for residents in the wider metropolitan region. Furthermore, professional groups combine accessibility advantages with the highest rates of owner occupation, maximising housing wealth benefits. Lower income groups are exposed to rent increases, though this is offset by social housing, which remains the most prevalent tenure in Inner London for low income classes.     

Children's school commuting in the Netherlands: Does it matter how urban form is incorporated in mode choice models?

Walking and cycling to school is environmentally sustainable and increases children's physical activity. Although it is known that the built environment influences children's travel behavior, there is scant knowledge of how urban form along children's commuting routes affects walking and cycling separately, or of how to incorporate urban form exposures in transport mode choice models. This research investigated (a) the associations between children's transport mode choice and urban form correlates en route, and (b) the consequences of different urban form operationalizations (i.e., individual variables, composite measure, and principal components [PCs]). Global Positioning System devices were used to track 623 trips to and from school made by Dutch children aged 6–11 years. Urban form exposures were derived with geographic information systems, and their relationships with mode choice were tested with mixed multinomial logit models in a cross-sectional research design. Differences between the number of associated urban form variables, their magnitudes, and their significance levels were found for both walking and cycling, independent of the operationalization. Urban form was most influential for walking, whereas distance-related effects were absorbed when modeled as PCs. The highest model fit was achieved through PCs; the composite measure resulted in the lowest fit. To maximize the effectiveness of planning and health interventions, walking and cycling must be targeted separately. Policymakers should avoid “one-fits-all policies,” which are deemed to be inefficient. Because urban form affects model interpretation and fit, careful attention should be paid to how urban form is modeled, and sensitivity analyses should be performed.     

Catchment if you can: The effect of station entrance and exit locations on accessibility

The success of passenger railway systems depends on their ridership and thus the population they serve. A mechanism to increase ridership is to expose the existing system to more people by reconfiguring the station itself, for instance by adding extra entrance and exit gates to shorten the walking distance from a trip's origin or its final destination. Gates are key nodes giving pedestrians access from street network to boarding/alighting facilities and vice versa. Stations and platforms are places not points, passengers may spend up to 6 min a trip walking between platforms and the end of the station nearest their origin or destination. This study systematically evaluates the accessibility of train stations and the effect of constructing an additional ‘far-side’ gate at stations with a single ‘near-side’ entrance. A three-step approach is defined to generate an isochrone as the catchment area for any transport node. Results indicate that stations with a single gate along their platforms (usually on one end of them) have the potential to increase the accessibility to jobs and population by around 10% on average. Due to the walking network and land use characteristics, some stations will benefit more significantly by retrofitting a new gate. Also, four linear regression models are developed to illustrate the effect of expanded accessibility on the number of entries and exits at each station for two peak periods. Then, stations are ranked based on their added ridership, which can help authorities to prioritize the development and allocating resources.     

The travel behaviour intentions of young people in the context of climate change

This article examines the factors influencing the future travel behaviour intentions of young people (aged 11–18), with specific attention given to how climate change considerations affect these. Overall it is found that the participants’ travel behaviour intentions are dominated by a desire to drive and that their values relating to identity, self-image, and social recognition (at the expense of their environmental values), as well as their affective attitudes towards transport modes, are key influences on this. Although they are aware of climate change, the participants’ understanding of the link between transport and climate change was weak. At the same time, they illustrated an apathy towards climate change – in part due to the timing and intangibility of its associated impacts and their lack of self-efficacy with respect to tackling this issue. However, despite claiming that their current environmentally friendly travel behaviours (such as walking or cycling to school) are not influenced by the issue of climate change, a number are accepting of the idea of enforced travel behaviour change – away from use of the car, towards more ‘environmentally friendly’ modes. This acceptance was in part due to their belief that such action would remove the influence of the ‘social dilemma’, where their own efforts to tackle climate change may be rendered worthless by the inaction of others.     

Continuum modeling approach to the spatial analysis of air quality and housing location choice

Today, air pollution is a great issue, and the transport sector is an important emission source. In this study, we present an integrated land use, transport, and environment model in which transport-related pollutants are assumed to influence people's housing location choices, and a continuum modeling approach is applied. The pollutants generated by the transport sector are dispersed by the wind and they affect air quality. The air quality changes people's housing choices, which in turn changes their travel behavior. We assume that the road users are continuously distributed over the city, that the road network is relatively dense, and that this network can be approximated as a continuum. The total demand is categorized into several classes, and the modeled region contains several subdistricts. People who live in different subdistricts or who belong to different classes of commuters are assumed to have different perceptions of travel time, air quality, and the housing provision–demand relationship. The finite element method and the Newton–Raphson algorithm are adopted to solve this problem, and a numerical valuation is given to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model.