Bicycle and Pedestrian Education

Description

Education and encouragement programs can help improve bicycle and pedestrian safety and awareness, improve driver awareness (improving car/bicycle interactions), and increase traffic law compliance. Research suggests that many people would like to bicycle or walk more but are concerned about safety and other issues. Improved education and encouragement can help regular drivers choose to walk and bike more often, reducing vehicle traffic and improving personal outcomes, like health or personal savings.

Education

Public awareness and education for drivers should include improvements to driver education courses. Courses should cover:

The effects of vehicles (especially those speeding) on pedestrians and bicyclists.
The specific concerns related to children on the roadways.

Education can also help people understand the laws and rules that apply to pedestrians and bicyclists and how they should interact with drivers on the road. Programs can be aimed at different groups, such as children, college students, alcohol consumers, adults, the elderly, commuters, transportation officials, and decision makers.

Encouragement

There are many ways to encourage bicycling and walking. Typical methods include:

Creating and sharing safety information with the public.
Providing bicycling and/or walking maps to groups like employees interested in commuting.
Providing information that helps commuters learn how to combine bicycling and transit.

Employers can encourage bicycling through improvements such as bike racks and showers for commuters, or free bicycle-sharing memberships.

Safe Routes to School programs often include walking and biking to school events, classroom walking competitions, and walking school buses (where an adult walking leader helps guide groups to school safely). A recent study of five states’ Safe Routes to School programs found that the programs increased bicycling and walking by 37 percent (from 12.9 percent to 17.6 percent).

The practice of occasionally closing streets to vehicles and allowing only bicyclists and pedestrians, also known as ciclovías, provides an opportunity to encourage and educate people with booths and activities. Education and encouragement methods are more effective when provided together.

Executive Summary

Target Market

Bicycle and pedestrian education and encouragement methods work best where adequate biking and walking infrastructure exists. This can include employment districts with improved bike lanes or transit and school neighborhoods.

Employment Districts

Local transportation agencies, transportation management associations, and private associations can partner to provide education and encouragement for bicycling and walking to work. These groups can help bicyclists understand how to safely ride in traffic or find the best transit stops for a short walk to work. They can host friendly competitions between employers or teams to see who can increase bicycling and walking the most over a certain time frame.⁶

Schools and Surrounding Neighborhoods

Schools are a natural location for education and encouragement programs because they have large numbers of students with limited access to private vehicles, many faculty and staff, and frequent turnover of students. Recent research suggests that Safe Routes to School projects may be more effective at encouraging bicycling to schools where few children already do so.⁵

Reaching out to surrounding neighborhoods and other environments also provides the opportunity to educate students’ families, as well as the drivers most likely affecting safe walking and biking conditions close to the school. School administration and transportation agencies should communicate regularly to guarantee program effectiveness.

How Will This Help?

Reduces congestion by encouraging bicycling and walking instead of driving. These programs also result in improved infrastructure projects that help individuals feel confident about bicycling and walking.
Improves safety by helping roadway users understand how to reduce crashes.

Implementation Examples

In the Netherlands, bicycle education in schools begins in kindergarten and continues through elementary school. Schools “teach children about traffic signs and traffic rules, so that they know and are able to apply them as the participate in traffic, and teach children to safely participate in traffic as pedestrians, bicyclists, and passengers.” The Dutch government works with Veilig Verkeer Nederland (Safe Traffic Netherlands), a non-profit organization, to organize training events and exams for students, including a bicycle check and a riding course about 2 miles long. Between 1980 and 2005, the Netherlands experienced a 45 percent increase in bicycling and a 58 percent decrease in traffic-related fatalities.

Application Techniques and Principles

Education and encouragement efforts support other strategies to increase bicycling and walking, such as infrastructure improvements. People may need to see or hear about changes in travel options more than once to make different decisions about how they travel. Three keys to successful programs include:

Understanding the ideal population for change.
Following the best ideas from previous examples.
Supporting efforts through ongoing programs, outreach, and evaluation.

Research the Market

Advertisers know that to change peoples’ minds, they have to reach the right population at the right time. Examples such as Portland’s SmartTrips, aimed at people who have recently moved, show how a relatively small amount of money can be focused to achieve maximum benefits. A similar trend may or may not be found in any given location. Each organization seeking to improve education and encouragement must find the most appropriate groups and apply the best methods to reach them.

Use the Best Examples

A great deal of research on education and encouragement exists and offers many methods that may work in different settings. The examples from El Paso, Portland, and the Netherlands may be helpful. The “For More Information” section provides additional examples that might better apply to a given context.

Follow Up

One common thread through the research on education and encouragement programs is to provide repeated outreach. Continued outreach also allows for program evaluation through surveys that measure changes in transportation choices.

Who Is Responsible?

Local transportation agencies, state departments of transportation, and non-profit organizations such as transportation management associations can form partnerships to promote education and encouragement. Each organization brings resources to accomplish goals, including:

Training skills.
Marketing knowledge.
Many funding sources.
Program evaluation experience.

Since persistent efforts yield ongoing progress, partnerships are most likely to achieve desired results over time.

Project Time Frame

Education and encouragement programs can be implemented very quickly. Organizations can apply workable strategies within several months by taking advantage of existing expertise, even if it requires bringing in an outside consultant. This knowledge needs to be spread across multiple agencies, such as city transportation departments and school districts, in order to maintain the programs and results, particularly when working with students.

Cost

Marketing programs vary according to staffing and personalization, but experience from Portland shows a range from $5 to $10 per person, or about $0.07 per driving trip reduced.

Data Needs

Evaluation methods for most education and encouragement techniques involve conducting participant surveys and considering program costs. Some programs include gathering direct data on usage, such as using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in student backpacks to count students bicycling and walking to school. Program evaluation is important for helping agencies decide how to get the most benefits for the cost.