The effect of a School Street intervention on children's active travel, satisfaction with their street, and perception of road safety: a natural experimental evaluation

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to determine whether, amongst children, School Street schemes: (1) increase active travel, (2) improve satisfaction and perception of safety crossing their school street; and (3) how they are perceived more broadly by children.

Methods: We recruited four intervention (School Street) and four control primary schools in Bradford, UK. Children aged 8-11 years completed a bespoke questionnaire at baseline, 4-6 weeks (T1), and one year (T2) after the intervention. Children in intervention schools were asked about their perceptions of the intervention. We used a difference-in-differences analysis to estimate the effect of the intervention on active travel, perceptions of the school road, and feelings of safety crossing the school road, with effects estimated for each intervention school separately and then pooled. Content analysis was conducted on free-text responses.

Results: One intervention school withdrew and was excluded. In the remaining seven schools, 942 children at Baseline, 629 at T1, and 608 at T2 had complete data for control variables. The intervention was associated with (i) a decrease in the probability of active travel on survey day of -0.11 percentage points at T1 (95% confidence intervals -0.20, -0.02; p = 0.02) and -0.18 percentage points at T2 (-0.27, -0.09; p < 0.001); (ii) a decrease of -0.96 in the number of weekly active trips at T2 (-1.72, -0.20; p = 0.01); and (iii) no change in the number of frequent active travellers (≥ 3 days/week). No differences were found in children's satisfaction or perception of safety. Qualitative analysis identified three themes, School Streets: (i) increased feelings of solidarity to protect children; (ii) improved perceptions of safety by reducing vehicles outside schools; (iii) children perceived barriers to car travel.

Conclusion: We saw very limited evidence that School Streets affected children's perceptions of feeling safe, liking their school road, identifying themselves as frequent active travellers; there was some evidence for reductions in self-reported active travel. A novel finding is the sense of solidarity and community cohesion that School Streets elicits. A greater understanding of the theory of change and how the intervention works in different areas and affects different groups is required.

Keywords: Active travel; Built environment; Children; Healthy streets; Physical activity; School streets.