With the advent of summer, the Texas Bicycle Coalition Education Fund has completed follow-up data collection in four representative Texas cities—Amarillo, Lubbock, Fort Worth and Wichita Falls—to determine the effectiveness of BikeTexas Safe Routes to School. The Coalition’s evaluation director, Lisa M. Groesz, a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, designed this rigorous, theory-based, experimental-controlled evaluation component to best monitor outcome and mechanisms of change.

To track the primary outcome variable, percent bicycling and walking to school, data were collected at baseline in fall 2005 and in May 2006 after the education and encouragement components were implemented. Full-time program staff and volunteers conducted traffic counts and class-based hand counts in four schools in Amarillo, four schools in Lubbock and four schools in Fort Worth in the fall. In addition to the collection of prevalence data, staff collected environmental and walkability data for these 12 schools. Concurrently, student and parent survey data were collected at seven schools in Wichita Falls in the fall from students of parents who signed consent forms.

In May 2006, data were collected from the same 19 schools to monitor potential change due to the education and encouragement components of BikeTexas Safe Routes to School. Three schools in Wichita Falls were randomized, after controlling for socioeconomic status based upon percentage of subsidized school lunches, to the waitlist condition wherein they will wait until fall 2006 to implement the program.

Results from the 19 schools in fall 2005 indicate that 444 children were bicycling or walking to school and 3,993 children were driven in cars; this translates to 11.11 percent of children traveling to school via bicycle or on foot. In May 2006, data from the 19 schools were collected again. The 16 experimental schools had 420 children walking or bicycling to school and 3,959 children being driven; translating to 10.6 percent of children bicycling or walking to school. There were six students in the three waitlist schools that arrived to school by bicycle or foot and 32 students that arrived to school via car, translating to 18.8 percent of students bicycling or walking to school. This inflated percentage of children bicycling and walking to the waitlist schools compared to the experimental schools is partially due to the smaller sample.

In addition to the outcome variable, Wichita Falls provided an opportunity to examine several mediators. Knowledge of bicycle and pedestrian safety significantly increased in the four experimental schools from a baseline of 61.1 percent correct answers to a follow-up of 71.6 percent correct. In comparison, the three waitlist schools used to control for assessment and time showed no significant increase in safety knowledge from a baseline of 58.5 percent correct to a follow-up of 61.3 percent correct. Other potential mediators: motivation to bicycle or walk (e.g. I think bicycling is cool) and self-confidence (e.g. I can bicycle without falling off my bike), did not show significant change in the experimental schools. The lack of change in these mediators could explain the fact that there were no significant difference in terms of bicycling and walking prevalence during the school year.

Based upon survey data collected from 200 parents in Wichita Falls, other reasons for limited impact could be distance from school and a known sex offender living in the neighborhood. One parent wrote, “I would allow my child to walk to school. But he is not allowed to take his bike to school because he doesn't have a bike lock.” Common comments from parents who allow their children to walk or bicycle to school included, “It is close and there are other kids that accompany her.” This comment underscores the importance of proximity to the campus and safety in numbers.

Overall, while the quantitative change may appear small, the Coalition expects greater changes next year. Because bicycling and walking to school has decreased in prevalence so much since 1960 (from 60 percent to 11 percent), changing this car-based norm will take time. The local outreach coordinators have taken huge strides to build community, teacher, and parent awareness, in addition to recruiting police and mayoral support. Building such a strong foundation will increase the likelihood of continued growth in the prevalence of safe bicycling and walking to school. Stay tuned for deeper levels of analyses as the data are further assessed to best determine mechanisms of change and factors that can be improved.