Advocates are increasingly calling on parents to get their children to walk or bike to school, a move that could dramatically reduce school traffic jams, slim children's waistlines, and help relieve school budgets of some gas-guzzling buses.  A variety of approaches to this problem are being attempted, from the community-based grassroots approach that the Cambridge Green Streets Initiative is using to encourage residents of the city to walk or bike on the last Friday of the month to more formal school-based programs like the Federally-Funded Safe Routes to Schools programs that are being piloted in selected Massachusetts elementary schools.  While researchers and practitioners are still determining which factors have the largest impacts on the behavior of children (and their parents) the Commonwealth must support further research and the continuation and expansion of existing programs.  

3.a    MAPC should undertake a study of the factors that influence mode choice in getting to schools in areas with existing infrastructure

3.b    The legislature should expand funding for the Safe Routes to Schools program

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