Evaluating the Relationship Between School Site Selection, Residential Developments & School Transportation in North Carolina

016413602017Final ReportProject # 2016-016PDFTech Report2016-016CostsElementary schoolsEvaluation and assessmentLand useLocationMode choiceNeighborhoodsRegional planningResidential locationSchool tripsPublic transitBuilt environmentFinanceHighwaysPedestrians and BicyclistsPlanning and ForecastingPublic TransportationUnited StatesNorth CarolinaSoutheastern Transportation Research, Innovation, Development and Education Center (STRIDE)McDonald, NoreenPalmer, W. MatthewSoutheastern Transportation Research, Innovation, Development and Education Center (STRIDE)University of North Carolina at Chapel HillUS Transportation CollectionThe purpose of this research is to understand whether \u2013 and to what extent \u2013 the built environment around a school influences the public and private costs of transporting students to that school and to measure those relationships over time. Assessing these relationships will allow school districts and communities to understand the impacts on school transportation operations and costs of decisions about neighborhood design and school location. This research expands on prior STRIDE-funded research that explored the relationship between community design factors such as residential development density, street network connectivity and school transportation operations and costs. This project collects secondary data available in North Carolina to develop a unique dataset showing the relationship between land use, via the distances between residential homes and schools, and school transportation costs using a sample of 50 North Carolina elementary schools. This approach advances the research agenda by 1) evaluating the land use distribution distances for four urban public schools systems; 2) exploring the relationship between local built environment conditions and school travel rates; and 3) accounting for social, economic and demographic factors in school travel mode choice. This larger sample size also increases the generalizability of the research to a range of built environment and community types. Further, the collection of this data has resulted in the largest paired school land use and transportation dataset in the United States; a de-identified version of the data will be made available to other researchers in the Southeast region. The results support national and regional policy efforts that articulate the economic benefits of constructing schools in more residentially dense areas for elected and professional school and community decision makers