Research

New Rural Resources

Can rural roads be good places to walk and bicycle?  Why yes, they certainly can!  My daughters got their first bicycles when they were five or six.  They loved the bikes – but they couldn’t ride them.  Because the streets in our small city were a little too busy for crazily uncoordinated families with bicycles and small children, we would drag ourselves, the girls, and the bikes over to the park every couple weeks.  We would run around awkwardly holding the bicycle seats and trying to prevent the girls from crashing to the ground.  While this did succeed in providing the whole family with

Economic Returns from Active Transportation

Jane WardAs many Americans are enjoying their summer vacations, it’s a good time to look at studies on the tourism and economic benefits that bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure can generate. While this may not seem immediately relevant to our day-to-day work of making schools and neighborhoods safer for walking and bicycling, policymakers can be strongly influenced by economic arguments. 

Exploring Collaboration Between Safe Routes to School and School Bus Professionals

school bus reportToday, most student transportation departments around the country focus primarily on getting students to school on yellow school buses. But student transportation isn’t just about school buses. Students are also getting to school by foot, bicycle, car, and public transportation.

Diving into the Research Around Getting Kids Outdoors

Jane WardRichard Louv coined the term “nature-deficit disorder,” in his award winning book Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. He recounts how children are spending progressively less time outdoors in free, unstructured play, and how wide-ranging the negative repercussions might be as children disconnect from the natural world.