Why collecting data on how families travel to school is important

Published on November 06, 2024

Since 2020, the City of Menlo Park Safe Routes to School program collects data on how students travel to and from school. In SRTS programs, counting how many students walk, bike, roll, drive or take the school bus to school is part of the evaluation process to understand how families travel to school.

Evaluation can be accomplished through parent surveys, student hand tallies in the classroom, tracking outreach activities and events, and using outside data sources. Data collection is important to establish a baseline of how students travel to school to improve SRTS activities and events.

Student tallies collect information on how students traveled to and from school over a two-day period. This information provides a snapshot of how students by school and grade level travel to school. This data can be used to evaluate behavior change and how families may use sustainable transportation including walking, biking or rolling to school because of SRTS activities.

In October, schools in Menlo Park collected student tallies in their classroom. While this data is still being analyzed, previous school year data can be found in the SRTS Annual Reports.

Additionally, the San Mateo County Office of Education SRTS program also encourages all schools in the county to collect student travel tallies. The data is compiled on a new user-friendly dashboard. Collecting this data is important because it can be used by cities or schools in funding opportunities to improve active transportation infrastructure, education or encouragement programs.