The association between the route-level walkability measures and children’s walk to school

Increasing active school trips is a strategy for children’s health. Despite that the route features may associate with higher amounts of walking school trips, the majority of previous studies have focused on buffer-level characteristics of the built environment. Moreover, the role of children’s interest has not been widely examined in previous studies. The present study investigates the associations between the route-level features of the built environment, socio-economic, and cognitive characteristics on children’s walk to school. A total of 340 questionnaires were distributed among 7-12 year-old pupils across three primary schools in a neighbourhood in Tehran. For each route to school the environmental features were collected by means of the Pedestrians First (PF) instrument, which is a tool for measuring the walkability. Results revealed that the number of motorcycles, and the distance from home to school were negatively, and the non-residential land use and the proportion of favourable sidewalks were positively related to the children’s walk to school. Parental worry about children’s walking to school negatively associated with children’s walk to school. Analyses, however, found the children’s interest in walking non-significant in their walk to school. The results had important ramifications for planning the walk to school programs in the neighbourhood level. Furthermore, findings underlined the provision of multi-facet long-term policies such as land use changes and school allocation patterns across the neighbourhood, when preparing master and land use plans, to enhance walking school travels for health reasons.