Creating Safe and Equitable Walkability to School: Infrastructure and Policy Readiness - This study highlights the lack of federal requirements for school bus policies, leading to limited transportation options for school-aged children. These children who must walk to school are defined as ‘involuntary walkers’ because school buses are not provided due to their residence’s proximity to school locations. These involuntary walkers face daily threats if they are not appropriately protected by proper pedestrian facilities and built environments. However, no research has been conducted to document school bus policies to understand how institutional policies contribute to creating involuntary walkers. Moreover, a clear knowledge gap exists in characterizing the roles of such policies and the corresponding built environments for involuntary walkers, and the associated safety outcomes such as crash rates. Based on our preliminary studies, we hypothesized that difference exists in street design and walkability across communities, which ultimately contribute to disproportionate crash outcomes for involuntary walkers. Our exploratory pilot study seeks to capture the direct impacts of school bus provision policies across different communities on school-aged children’s roadway safety, particularly for involuntary walkers. We will develop comprehensive built environment readiness (BER) features to measure the walkability of involuntary walkers. Our measures capture route-based street designs and neighborhood characteristics to assess involuntary walkers’ mobility, accessibility, and ease of use for pedestrian facilities for routes to schools. We will conduct a geospatial analysis and statistical modeling to assess how BER features and school bus policies impact safety outcomes. In particular, our hypothesis tests will explore BER variations within and between school zones by community characteristics. Additionally, we will develop regression models to evaluate the effects of BER and school bus policies on crash rates, accounting for age factors. Our innovation will develop specific built environment design improvements and age-appropriate infrastructure design to directly facilitate school-aged children’s safety. Based on the most critical built environmental factors affecting crash rates, we will develop age- and location-specific modifiable risk factors contributing to involuntary walkers’ crashes. By collaborating with community partners such as School Districts, the City of Reno, Washoe County, Clark County, and the Regional Transportation Commission (NV’s Metropolitan Planning Organization), we will develop evidence-based strategies for practitioners for their resource prioritizations for pedestrian environment enhancements as well as national-level educational interventions such as Safe Routes to School workshops. Our knowledge will offer insights into the extent of school bus policy and built environment design readiness on children’s safety.
