Walking and bicycling to school—Understanding the impact of socio-economic factors and built environment

Abstract

Unlike western countries, there has been very limited research related to mode choice for school children in India. The sharp decline in the use of non-motorized transport (NMT) in developed countries has been the motivation behind such studies. The hypothesis of the same trend in India cities was tested in this study. The results were quite alarming as it showed a fall of 46% in NMT use for the school trip. The paper explores mode choice literature on for school-going children and also the studies relating NMT use with the health. Investigation of mode choice for school children in India was carried out based on two major perspectives namely socio-economic attributes of the parents and built environment. Survey of 526 parents was carried out from different primary schools in the study area and a multinomial logit (MNL) model was developed. The factors like vehicular ownership, school distance, education level of parents, type of school, and standard of child proved significant for the mode choice of children in this model. The analysis for the effect of built environment factors and its effect on NMT use was separately conducted. The results of this analysis showed that 54% parents did not feel safe to send their children to school by walk or cycle and the primary reasons stated were “long distance to school” and “crime and safety”. Since long distance proved to be a major factor for creating a disutility for NMT mode, a binary logit analysis was done to find the probability of NMT use. The result shows that the breakeven distance is 2.3 km, at which the probability of usage of motorized vehicle and non-motorized vehicle becomes the same. The paper concludes with the recommendations based on the result of the study and future prospects of work that can be done.