Examining Long-Term Impact of California Safe Routes to School Program

Abstract

California was the first state to legislate a Safe Routes to School (SR2S) program under Assembly Bill 1475 (1999). SR2S funds construction projects that make it safer for children to walk or bicycle to school and encourages a greater number of children to choose these modes of travel for the school commute. The main goal of this project was to assess the long-term impact of program-funded engineering modifications on walking and bicycling levels and safety. Improvements were evaluated with a targeted method to determine the countermeasures that resulted in safety and mode shift. The major results indicated that the safety of pedestrians increased within 250 ft of an infrastructure improvement, such as a sidewalk. There was also evidence of mode shift near improvements. Positive results for safety and mobility, as well as improved data collection for funded programs, should make SR2S programs competitive among other transportation needs.

The Effectiveness of Healthy Community Approaches on Positive Health Outcomes in Canada and the United States

“…However, neither study could conclusively confirm the safety effects of Safe Routes to School Programs because of limitations inherent in the study design and lack of data on other correlates of collisions that may offer alternative explanations for the results. Another recent study by Ragland et al also found a significant reduction in collisions involving pedestrians of all ages within 250 feet of countermeasure buffer zones [38]. Although a decrease in collisions also occurred among pedestrians aged 5 to 18 years, it was not statistically significant.…”

“…While the overwhelming emphasis of study outcomes focused on rates of active travel, five articles attempted to estimate the safety benefits that accrue from SRTS programs [35][36][37][38][39]. Di Maggio and Li found that annual rates of pedestrian injuries in children aged 5-19 years decreased in census tracts with SRTS improvements when compared to those census tracts without projects [35].…”

Healthy Urban Environments for Children and Young People: A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies

“…A post-intervention decrease in the annual rate of school-aged pedestrian injury (44%, 95% CI: 17-65) during schooltravel hours was reported in the New York programme (Dimaggio and Li, 2013). However, there was no strong evidence for a postintervention reduction in collisions within 250 feet of a built environment change (incident rate ratio: 0.47, 95% CI: 0.20-1.12) in the Californian programme (Ragland et al, 2014).…”

“…Three studies examined road traffic injuries (Dimaggio and Li, 2013;Grundy et al, 2009;Ragland et al, 2014) of which one UKbased study investigated the impact of 20 miles per hour (mph) traffic speed zones on road traffic casualties from a non-randomised observational study (Grundy et al, 2009). All three were classified at an overall moderate risk of bias with none of the individual domains being classified as at serious risk of bias.…”

“…The effect of the USA Safe Routes to School programmes (which included installation of sidewalks and traffic calming measures) on road traffic causalities and rate of collisions was also reported: data in relation to 30 of 124 potentially eligible intervention sites (Dimaggio and Li, 2013) and 93 of 313 Safe Routes to School programmes (Ragland et al, 2014) were obtained for these studies. For all three studies, outcome measures were population-based and comprised routinely collected data in relation to hospital admissions and police investigations for crashes and road traffic accidents.…”