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Getting kids to walk, bike to school
UB planning students discovered that only 7.8 percent of the 7,017 K-8 students attending Williamsville schools walk or bike to school, although 48.8 percent live within a one-mile radius of their schools.
Kid Corridor zones, student safety education and detailed maps of safe walking and bicycling routes are among the recommendations made by graduate students in the Department of Urban and Regional planning to encourage students in the Williamsville Central School District to get out of cars and off buses and ride and walk to school instead.
The recommendations were presented last month as part of the Kid Corridors plan devised by the UB students over the past several months at the behest of the Town of Amherst and the school district.
The plan discusses the reasons for encouraging active commuting, cites existing barriers to walking and makes a series of policy, program and physical recommendations directed to the town and district to help get the students to walk to school.
They include:
•Creation of a Kid Corridors Subcommittee of the town’s Youth Board charged with implementing the plan and overseeing ongoing development.
•Designation of “Kid Corridor zones” extending one mile around all the Williamsville elementary and middle schools. The town should direct to those zones policy changes and physical improvements that facilitate walking, such as pedestrian-friendly physical infrastructure, sidewalk repair and enhanced enforcement of traffic laws.
•A recommendation that the school district educate students in safely navigating on foot or bicycles within the Kid Corridors zones.
•A recommendation that the district send families of the students living within one mile of an elementary or middle school a detailed map of the shortest and most convenient walking/bicycling route to their school. Active commuting maps for each school in the district, which are provided in the Kid Corridors plan, should be made available for easy access.
The report notes that at this time, only 7.8 percent of the 7,017 K-8 students attending Williamsville schools walk or bike to school, although 48.8 percent live within a one-mile radius of their schools.
Key barriers to active commuting among these students, say the UB planners, include traffic conditions that hinder walking and bicycling, among them busy roads and intersections, high traffic volume and speeds, and dangerous drivers; parents’ concerns about abduction or exploitation of their children; and lack of physical infrastructure maintenance.
Other barriers are the fact that the students live in a non-walking culture, that the design of the built environment is not friendly to pedestrians and that students may have to deal with the physical strain of carrying heavy backpacks.
“Regular physical activity improves academic achievement, as well as the physical and emotional health of children,” the report says.
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