Abstract
GIS Analysis of the Distance and Safety for School Transportation
Track: GIS for Administration, Planning and Policy
Author
School districts often use the travel distance and hazardous barriers (e.g., freeways) as the only factors when deciding students’ eligibility for school bus services. This approach may have ignored crime and traffic safety that are important for school transportation.
This study examined the home-to-school routes of 2,605 children from 20 elementary schools in the Austin Independent School District, in Texas, to measure their travel distances and the safety threats in the routes.
Students’ homes were geo-coded using Address Locator. The shortest home-to-school routes were identified for all students through network analysis and the travel distances were calculated. Finally, the crime and crash density within 1/8 mile buffers of these routes were calculated by spatial analysis.
Findings suggest that students in low-income neighborhoods are exposed to more crime and traffic accidents. When deciding the students’ eligibility for school bus service, the safety measures should also be taken into consideration.
Katsuhiko Oda
Department of Geography, Texas A&M University
810 Eller O&M Building
Collge Station, Texas 77843-3147
United States
Phone: 979-260-1644
E-mail: kirkoda@geog.tamu.edu
Xuemei Zhu
Texas A&M University
002B J.K. Williams Administration Building
3137 TAMU
College Station, Texas 77843
United States
Phone: 979-845-3780
E-mail: xuemeizhu@tamu.edu