T H E

C I E N C E

O F

H E A L T H

P R O M O T I O N

Applied Research Brief: Health Promoting Community Design

Suitability of Commuting by Bicycle to Arizona

Elementary Schools
Susan B. Sisson, MS; Sarah M. Lee, PhD; Elizabeth K. Burns, PhD; Catrine Tudor-Locke, PhD

Abstract
Purpose. To determine the biking suitability (i.e., bikeability) of and prevalence of biking in 14 elementary schools representing two extremes of bused students (2.4% vs.
53.6%).
Methods. Street segments (within 0.25-mile radius of school) were scored for bikeability.
Bikes in racks per school student population established biking prevalence. Mann-Whitney
U-test compared bikeability and prevalence of biking between groups.
Results. A total of 12.5 6 2.2 streets per school were assessed. Thirteen schools scored
very good (,3.0) and one scored fair (4.04.9). Median bikeability score was 0.69 for the
low-busing schools and 0.53 for the high-busing schools (nonsignificant). Median biking
prevalence was 3.1% in the low-busing schools and 1.3% in the high-busing schools
(p , .05).
Conclusion. Streets surrounding schools were adequate for biking. Biking prevalence
was significantly higher in low-busing schools but was relatively low in both low- and
high-busing schools. Other factors, including intraindividual, social, school, and community, likely contribute to choice of biking to school. (Am J Health Promot 2006;20[3]:210
213.)
Key Words: Built Environment, Physical Activity, Transportation, Bikeability.
Manuscript format: research; Research purpose: evaluation; Study design: nonexperimental; Outcome measure: behavioral; Setting: elementary school; Health
focus: physical activity; Strategy: built environment; Target population: youth;
Target population circumstances: elementary schools; Geographic location; Other: bikeability, active commuting, Geographic Information Systems
Susan B. Sisson, MS; Sarah M. Lee, PhD; and Catrine Tudor-Locke, PhD, are with the Department of Exercise and Wellness, Arizona State University East, Mesa, Arizona. Elizabeth K.
Burns, PhD, is with the Department of Geography, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
Send reprint requests to Susan B. Sisson, MS, Department of Exercise and Wellness, 7350 E Unity
Ave, Mesa, AZ 85212; susan.white@asu.edu.
This manuscript was submitted October 13, 2004; revisions were requested February 22, 2005, and March 2, 2005; the
manuscript was accepted for publication March 8, 2005.
Copyright q 2006 by American Journal of Health Promotion, Inc.
0890-1171/06/$5.00 1 0

PURPOSE
The Healthy People 2010 report emphasizes the importance of children
actively commuting to and from
school.1 Currently, only 3.2% of U.S.
children bike to school daily, with
40% fewer trips compared with a
generation ago.2,3 A telephone survey

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American Journal of Health Promotion

in Georgia found that of 315 children who lived less than 1 mile from
school, 18.6% walked, 33.4% bused,
and 41.9% were driven in cars.4 Unfortunately this survey did not look
at biking separately, possibly because
of its relatively low prevalence. Safety,
convenience, social patterns, and the
physical environment all potentially

affect commuting mode. Specifically,

the built environment, or the way
communities are designed, greatly affects active commuting in adults,5 but
little is known about the impact on
children. Balanced use of land between residences and retail, block
size, and how well the streets are
connected to each other and destinations (i.e., connectivity)69 may affect
choices to use bicycles. More research is needed to understand how
the built environment affects biking
suitability (i.e., bikeability) and childrens commuting so that future developments can better support active
commuting behaviors. Therefore, the
purpose of this study was to examine
bikeability and prevalence of biking
in 14 elementary schools in Mesa, Arizona.
METHODS
Design
The study was a nonexperimental
analysis of the bikeability (including
school biking policies) and biking
prevalence of a select sample of elementary schools. Bikeability is regarded as the ease in which street
segments can be traveled on bicycle,
and prevalence of biking is simply
the proportion of students who bike
to school relative to the student population.
Sample
Schools differing on the proportion of students bused were identified by using data maintained by
Mesa Public Schools. The seven
schools with the highest and lowest
proportion of bused students were
selected from the 56 public elementary schools in the district. Selection

of these was rationalized, as they represented opposite ends of the busing

behavior spectrum; if a difference existed, we expected it to be most evident between these groups of
schools. The University Institutional
Review Board approved all methods.
Measures
Bikeability Assessment. A map was constructed by ArcView 3.2 Geographic
Information Systems to identify a
0.25-mile radius around each elementary school (i.e., representing the immediate physical environment). All
street segments were subsequently assessed with a previously validated (r
5 .62) bikeability instrument10 according to seven factors: (1) average
daily traffic, (2) number of through
lanes, (3) speed limit, (4) outside
lane width, (5) bike lane width (if
available), (6) pavement factors (e.g.,
new pavement, cracking, deterioration), and (7) location factors (e.g.,
grade, curves, commercial, residential, difficult intersections).10 Individual street scores were then averaged
to represent a composite bikeability
score for each elementary school.
Scores are interpreted as the following: very good , 3.0, good 5 3.0 to
3.99, fair 5 4.0 to 4.99, poor 5 5.0 to
6.99, and very poor . 6.99.
Biking Prevalence. A preliminary study
was conducted on four schools (two
each representing busing extremes)
to determine how many days of bike
counting were necessary to reliably
assess biking prevalence. Specifically,
bikes in racks were counted during
school hours for five consecutive
days. A one-way repeated measures
analysis of variance (F4,12 5 .2128, p
5 .14, nonsignificant) and intraclass
correlation (ICC 5 .9944) was used
to determine that random one-day
sampling produced a reliable estimate of the number of bikes in racks
and was subsequently used to compute biking prevalence (bikes counted divided by the schools student
population) for the rest of the study.
School Biking Policies. The only formal
(e.g., documented) school district
transportation policy stated that elementary school children living far-

Table 1
Descriptive Demographic Data for High- and Low-busing Schools*

School Variable
Mean number of students
% Students busing to and from school
% Free and reduced lunch
% Single parent
% White
% African-American
% Hispanic
% Native American
% Asian
% Male
% Female

High Busing
(n 5 7)
696
53.6
55.2
29.1
53.7
4.7
30.4
9.1
2.1
51.4
48.6

6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6

142
9.7
19.1
8.3
14.6
2.4
11.1
6.8
1.2
1.6
1.6

Low Busing
(n 5 7)
782
2.4
72.1
29.1
36.5
5.9
52.0
4.0
1.5
53.3
46.7

6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6

122
1.3
16.7
5.0
21.1
4.0
21.6
3.0
0.6
1.0
1.0

* High and low busing speaks to the prevalence of students who ride a bus to school. Values
are expressed as means 6 standard deviation.

ther than 1 mile from school must

arrive by bus or private vehicle. Brief
interviews with six of the school principals (e.g., those agreeing to participate) were conducted to determine
and explore school-level bicycling
and helmet-usage policies (e.g., formal and informal). This information
was not used in the quantitative data
analysis but was gathered to gain
greater insight into school-level biking policies.
Analysis
Analysis of the quantitative data
was conducted by SPSS 10.0. Because
data were skewed, nonparametric
Mann-Whitney U-tests were conducted to determine the difference in
bikeability scores and biking prevalence between high- and low-busing
schools. Spearman correlation coefficients were computed to explore associations between bikeability score
and biking prevalence.
RESULTS
Quantitative Results
Descriptive data for low- and highbusing schools are presented in Table 1. The mean number of streets
assessed per school was 12.5 6 2.2.
Median bikeability score was 0.69 for
the low-busing schools and 0.53 for
the high-busing schools. Median bikeability scores for each school can be
seen in Figure 1. All but one street
ranked very good (,3.0) with the ex-

ception rating fair (4.04.99) according to the bikeability instruments

rating scale. No significant difference
was noted between high- and low-busing schools (z(20,48) 5 20.58, p 5
.57). Prevalence of biking for lowbusing schools was 3.1% for the median, 2.0% for the 25th percentile,
and 5.8% for the 75th percentile.
The prevalence of biking for highbusing schools was 1.3% for the median, 0.8% for the 35th percentile,
and 1.9% for the 75th percentile. A
significant difference (z(3,24) 5 22.41,
p 5 .016) existed in biking prevalence between high- and low-busing
schools. The Spearman correlation
between bikeability scores and biking
prevalence yielded a nonsignificant,
low-negative correlation (r (12) 5
2.20, p 5 .53).
Qualitative Results
One school identified a formal
biking policy that designated approved bike trails (the specific streets
and sidewalks that students could or
could not use) and restricted bicycle
use to students in at least fourth
grade without parental permission.
The designated bike trails often prohibited students from riding on the
street and encouraged cyclists to ride
on sidewalks. Two other schools required parental permission for anyone to bike to school, and the remaining three schools had informal
policies (e.g., policies that were not
formally documented but that were

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211

Figure 1
Median Bikeability Scores for High- and Low-busing Schools.

No significant difference (p 5 .57). Very good , 3.0, good 5 3.0 to 3.99, fair 5 4.0 to 4.99, poor
5 5.0 to 6.99, and very poor . 6.99.

simply expected of parents and students, such as restricting younger

children [younger than second
grade] from biking). All schools required students to park and lock
their bikes in designated bike rack
areas on campus; four schools had
cages around the bike racks that
were locked by grounds staff during
the school day, thus limiting unsupervised access to the bikes during the
school hours.
Schools administrators reported
various ideas that could possibly increase the number of students biking
to school, including affordability and
access to bikes, increased parental
safety knowledge, personnel to fix
flats and do bike repair, and increased and improved sidewalks. Because of high-traffic concerns, at
least one principal stated a preference that children not bike to
school. Although principals indicated
that injury while riding bikes to and
from school was a concern, they acknowledged that this was seldom a
real issue. To prevent injuries to cyclists or pedestrians, each school required cyclists to dismount on cam-

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American Journal of Health Promotion

pus and walk their bikes to the rack.

If students wore helmets to school,
they were either stored with the bikes
or brought into classrooms. None of
the schools reported a problem with
theft, except for bikes that were left
on school property overnight or were
unlocked.
DISCUSSION
Summary
As reported in the U.S. National
Health Styles Survey, weather, traffic
dangers, crime, aesthetic and convenience of neighborhoods, and unattended dogs have all been reported
as barriers for children walking and
biking to school.11,12 This preliminary
study showed that bikeability (which
assesses some of the above characteristics) of the immediate neighborhood surrounding an elementary
school does not significantly differ
between those schools with high or
low busing. Although the prevalence
of biking between high- and low-busing schools showed a significant difference, both were relatively low

(3.6% for low bused vs. 1.4% for

high bused).
Limitations
Several possibilities exist as to why
the instrument used did not show a
difference in the bikeability of the
high- and low-busing schools. Either
the streets surrounding these schools
were consistent in terms of bikeability, or the environment in which children bike was not well represented
by this specific instrument. Children
who were incidentally observed on
bike were on the sidewalk, not the
street. In contrast, the instrument
was focused on street characteristics
(of importance to adult cyclists) rather than sidewalks. During the interviews with the principal, we learned
that some of the schools endorsed
biking only on designated sidewalks.
Important sidewalk characteristics,
(lighting, ramps, aesthetics, quality)
were not considered. Overall, however, the neighborhood streets immediately surrounding the schools (i.e.,
within 0.25 mile) mostly scored
good and thus could not be described as limiting biking opportunities. One school scored fair because of a prevalence of country,
gravel roads. However, despite these
noted limitations of the instrument
used, it is currently the best instrument available for this type of environmental research (completed by
nontransportation specialists) because of its ease of use and interpretability.
Although not assessed herein, the
role of parents in influencing childrens commuting choices cannot be
understated; a recent study from the
United Kingdom indicated that 23%
more children would rather bike or
walk to school than were allowed by
parents.13 Furthermore, some schools
in the Mesa School District are designated no busing schools (except
in the case of disability) where all
students must either walk, ride in
cars, or bike. Regardless, the schools
varied in terms of local support of
children biking. Low-busing schools
appeared to have greater support for
biking, possibly because of limited
options. A parent and community intervention might be helpful to support those schools with more restric-

tive biking policies move toward a

more bike-friendly policy.
Implications
The bikeability instrument indicated that streets surrounding schools
were adequate for biking, but prevalence of biking was still relatively low.
It is likely that other factors, including intraindividual, social, school, environment, and community, contribute to childrens choices of mode.
Suitability of the built environment
to foster nonvehicular modes of travel is part of a wider effort in the urban planning community to incorporate elements of walking and bicycling suitability. Existing schools,
such as those in this study, could educate parents and children about
biking to school. Implementation of
improvements is most likely to be
achieved when the stakeholders
principals, public agencies, parents,
and studentsare involved.

Future research should further examine the impact of the physical environment on biking, including sidewalk characteristics, safety concerns,
school policies, and the sociocultural
context in which schools are located.
A clearer understanding of why children and parents choose a specific
mode of transportation for the
school commute would be informative. Such information is necessary to
guide interventions aimed at addressing Healthy People 2010 objectives to
increase childrens active commuting
to school by bicycle.

5.
6.

7.

8.
9.

10.

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