Effectiveness of a Safe Routes to School Program in preventing school-age pedestrian injury

In 2005 the US Congress allocated $612 million for a national Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program to encourage walking and bicycling to schools. We analyzed pedestrian crash data in New York City to determine if SRTS interventions were associated with decreased pediatric pedestrian injury risk.

Using geocoded crash data for 168,806 pedestrian injuries in New York City between 2001 to 2010, we calculated annual pedestrian injury rates for children aged 5 to 19 years old. We compared between census tracts with and without SRTS interventions in the pre and post intervention period during school-travel hours (7AM to 9AM or 2PM to 4PM, Monday to Friday excluding July and August). We further assessed the effectiveness of the SRTS program through Poisson regression modeling of injury counts.

In census tracts with SRTS interventions the annual rate of school-age pedestrian injuries during school-travel hours decreased 44\% (95% CI 17%, 65%) from 8.0 injuries per 10,000 to 4.4 injuries per 10,000 . Iin those census tracts without SRTS interventions there was no change in the rate of school-age pedestrian injury during school travel hours (0% 95% CI -0.8%, 0.8%). In a Poisson regression analysis the estimate for an interaction effect between the post-intervention time period with SRTS interventions indicated a lowered risk of school-hour pedestrian injuries (exponentiated coefficient = 0.60 95% CI 0.25, 1.43).

The SRTS program in New York City has contributed to a marked reduction in pedestrian injury in school-aged children. This program should be expanded to cover all schools.