Towards a Safe Routes to School Plan in Monona
Click on the image below to check out the full report created by the transportation team of the Planning Workshop:
A survey for the City of Monona
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Course conducted a survey of parents whose children attended one or more school in Monona. The survey identifies the commute behavior of students in Monona to and back from school such as time, distance, and mode of transportation. The survey finds out why or why not the parents letting their children to walk or bike to and back from school. The result also reveals roads or intersection where parents expressed concerns for the safety of their children. Ultimately, the survey aims to shed some light on potential improvement to ensure safe route to school for the children in the City of Monona.
From Nov 14, 2016 to Dec 1, 2016, we collected a total of 287 responses from the parents of the students who attended the following school(s):
Figure 1 shows survey response number by schools. Due to high participation rate from WES and MGHS, they reflect majority of voices in this survey.
Potentially, the children who live less than 1 mile (48.7%) can walk to school in 20 minutes at a walking speed of 3 miles per hour(mph). In addition, the students who live less than 2 miles (71.90%) can bike to school in 15 minutes at a 8mph biking speed.
Figure 3 and Figure 4 show traveling time to and from school. Generally, children spend more time traveling from school than traveling to school. 6.3% more children spend more than 20 minutes traveling from school than traveling to school. 4.8% less children spend less than 10 minutes traveling back from than traveling to school.
More children take school bus, car pool, or walk back from school than go to school (see Figure 5). At the same time, there are 9.05% less children coming back from school by family vehicle than going to school. In other words, parents who sent their children to school in the morning let their children either walk, or take school bus or car pool to come back from school.
Our focus is safe route to school, thus, the mode of transportation is aggregated into two categories:
Figure 6 and Figure 7 show the mode of transportation going to and coming back from school. Compared to going to school, bike, walk, others category increased by 5.7% when children coming back from school.
a
Figure 8 and 9 shows mode of transportation to back from school categorized by school. For WES, 2.25% more children coming back from school by walk, bike, or others compared to going to school. For MGHS, 11.34% more children going back from school by walk, bike, or others compared to going to school. 4.55% more children who go to IHoMCS bike, walk, or others back from school compared to going school. NHCS and MG21 have more children bike and walk to school than go to school by school bus, family vehicle, carpool, or city bus. NMCS and MG21 have the same mode of transportation going to and coming back from school.
For children who walk or bike to school, 80.36% of the parents feel the route to school is somewhat safe or very safe, and 19.65% of the parents feel the route to school is not at all safe or somewhat unsafe (see Figure 13).
For children who DO NOT walk or bike to school, only 33.17% of the parents feel the route to school is somewhat safe or very safe, and 58.54% of the parents feel the route to school is not at all safe or somewhat unsafe (see Figure 14).
Since children who DO NOT walk or bike live further away from school, we can conclude that the longer the distance, the parents feel the route to school is more unsafe.
The following are the top five factors that influence parents decision in letting their children to walk or bike to school. Also, whether the parents would allow their children to walk or bike to school if the issues are resolved. See detailed breakdown in Figure 15, Figure 16, and Figure 17.
Sidewalks or pathways, speed, and amount of traffic along routes should be our major focus to improve safe route to school since they are the recuring themes in the results.
The parents also vote the most important reason their children do not walk or bike to school:
79.35% of the parents agree that certain area or intersection have safety concerns. The following map summarizes frequency of those roads or intersection mentioned by the parents:
Out of the 119 comments from parents about area or intersection in Monona with safety concerns, the most frequently mentioned road is Winnequah Road (26 times), the next highest mentioned road is Monona Drive (16 times).
The following are some of the comments from parents about the roads in Monona:
The survey reveals large discrepancy between potential numbers of children who can walk or bike to school and number of children who actually work or bike to school. There are close to 50% less children who actually walk or bike to school than the expected number based on their traveling distance to school. It is important to understand reasons that deter children from walking or biking to school.
Parents who let their children walk or bike to school largely feel optimistic about the safety of the route to school. On the contrary, the majority of parents who do not allow their children to walk or bike feel the route to school is not at all safe or somewhat unsafe. When they are asked to identify why or why not letting their children to walk or bike to school, speed of traffic, and amount of traffic, sidewalk, and weather are the important factors cited by both sides. For children who do not walk or bike to school, parents would allowed the children to walk or bike if sidewalk, speed of traffic, and amount of traffic are improved.
The parents also identify roads and intersection that have safety concerns.In particular, Winnequah Road and Monona Drive are the most mentioned roads where parents have safety concerns for their children. In short, the result of the survey are valuable input from parents of Monona that can provide directions on how to improve the safe route to school in the future.
Click on the image below to check out the full report created by the transportation team of the Planning Workshop:
This survey is adopted from the Parent Survey about Walking and Biking to School by the National Center for Safe Routes to School for both English and Spanish version. This survey is distributed to five participating schools in the City of Monona using UW-Madison Qualtrics Survey Hosting Service. The survey result is analyzed and displayed through this website.
This survey is carried out by the graduate students from Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The survey is one of the tasks in URPL 912: Planning Workshop under UniverCity Year project, a year-long partnership between UW-Madison and the City of Monona. Under the supervision of faculty, students collaborate with City of Monona to work on issues in housing and transportation.
Teng Heong Ng is a graduate student from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She specializes in environmental planning and Geographic Information System (GIS). Heong analyzed the quantitative result of the survey and designed the website.
Lisa Charron is pursuing a dual Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning and Public Health. She specializes in planning active, healthy communities. Lisa helped with the qualitative coding for this website.
Zachary Chappell is a graduate student from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Zach translated the survey into Spanish version.
We would like to thank the following group of people: