Youth Safety and Mobility
RELATED TOPICS: Equity, Health, Vision Zero, Community Engagement
Trips to and from schools account for a significant amount of travel in a community. Addressing youth mobility by increasing opportunities to walk and bike to school safely benefits not only children by promoting physical activity, but also the community by developing safe active transportation environments for all. This need stretches beyond the trip to school to a variety of places where children frequently walk and bike. In many communities, the school zone and other areas where children walk and bike are starting places to address wider safety issues like speed.
Planning and designing communities for youth involve infrastructure designed for the specific needs of children. Education is also a key component, where training programs teach bicycle and pedestrian safety as children develop, as is enforcement in areas like schools zones where children frequently walk and bike.
Resources
Tips for Parents and Other Adults for Teaching Pedestrian Safety to Children offers tips to teach pedestrian safety to children. Also available in Spanish.
What Makes a "Biking" School? How Some Schools Have Pulled Ahead in Cycling Rates investigates factors associated with high rates of bicycling to school to identify replicable ways to facilitate active transportation.
Creating Safer Streets Where Youth Walk and Bike provides information about Vision Zero for Youth and strategies for prioritizing youth pedestrian and bicyclist safety with the broader goal of improving safety for all road users.
School Travel Data: Innovative Collection Methods and Uses discusses low cost and higher investment strategies for collecting school travel data and how different agencies are using those data.
Who is Walking or Biking to School? explores what the 2017 National Household Travel Survey can (and cannot) tell us about how students travel to school.
The Walking School Bus: Combining Safety, Fun and the Walk to School outlines the benefits of starting a walking school bus and points to consider for implementation.
Teaching Children to Walk Safely as They Grow and Develop provides parents and caregivers an overview of the stages of child development and identifies which walking safety skills to teach along the way.
Pedestrian Safer Journey and Bicycle Safer Journey provide age specific video lessons to teach bicycle and pedestrian safety skills either in the classroom or in a one-on-one setting.
Walk and Bike to School Day provides resources on planning events for Walk to School Day and Bike to School Day along with ideas for year-round walking programs.
Considerations for Deploying Automated Driving Systems Around Schools summarizes the challenges of automated driving systems (ADS) around K-12 schools and provides ten recommendations for ADS developers and local stakeholders to consider prior to broad deployment of automated vehicles around schools.
Safety-Based Prioritization for Youth Pedestrian Travel Planning: Applying Systemic Pedestrian Safety Analysis to Youth Travel applies the steps outlined in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Report 893: Systemic Pedestrian Safety Analysis to present a process for assessing high risk locations for youth pedestrian crashes specifically.
More Resources >
Examples
Seattle models strategies for equitably advancing safe walking and biking for youth offers a look at Seattle's strategies for equitably advancing safe walking and biking for youth.
Planning Considerations for Walking and Rolling to School in Fall 2020 describes the benefits of including walking and biking to school in fall school re-opening plans and addresses four main planning questions.
Safe Routes to School Action Plan from Los Angeles, California strategically implements Safe Routes to School infrastructure and non-infrastructure projects as a component of a Vision Zero plan.
Vision Zero for Youth: Stories illustrates examples of communities that have focused on improving safety for youth.
Safe Routes to Parks provides a framework for planning for safe pedestrian and bicycle access to parks for all ages.
