IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jotrge/v19y2011i4p943-949.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Children aged 9–14 living in disadvantaged areas in England: Opportunities and barriers for cycling

Author

Listed:
  • Christie, Nicola
  • Kimberlee, Richard
  • Towner, Elizabeth
  • Rodgers, Sarah
  • Ward, Heather
  • Sleney, Judith
  • Lyons, Ronan

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to take a holistic perspective to explore levels of cycling and opportunities and barriers to increase children’s safer cycling in disadvantaged areas in England. The study was one part of a larger study which explored the factors underlying the high level of road traffic casualties especially among children in the most disadvantaged areas of England and to explore how this impacts on mobility and quality of life. The methods involved a cross sectional survey comprising school based questionnaire surveys with children aged 9–14 and focus groups with parents who had children within this age range. The surveys were conducted in 2007 and the focus groups during 2008. 4286 children completed the survey and eight focus groups were held. Bike ownership (77%) was high, use in previous week moderate (39%) but only 2% cycled to school. Ownership was significantly lower in minority ethnic groups. Despite young children’s strong preference to travel by cycle (30%) than walk or go by car, most parents felt it was too hazardous. It is unlikely that these findings would be any different from the rest of England, however the combination of environmental and social factors may elevate the risks for young cyclists in these areas. This paper concludes that a number of barriers exist to increasing levels of cycling among children living in disadvantaged areas particularly amongst ethnic groups. These barriers could be addressed by environmental modifications to reduce speeds and by reducing the levels of antisocial driving and riding in residential areas and around destinations where children travel, by providing cycle training to improve children’s skills and parent’s confidence, and by providing secure storage facilities for bikes. Until these barriers are addressed it is unlikely that cycling will increase despite the strong preferences children have to travel by bike. Such preferences to cycle provide an opportunity for local authorities to act on.

Suggested Citation

  • Christie, Nicola & Kimberlee, Richard & Towner, Elizabeth & Rodgers, Sarah & Ward, Heather & Sleney, Judith & Lyons, Ronan, 2011. "Children aged 9–14 living in disadvantaged areas in England: Opportunities and barriers for cycling," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 943-949.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:19:y:2011:i:4:p:943-949
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2010.12.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692310001961
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2010.12.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gutierrez, Nicolas & Orenstein, Marla & Cooper, Jill & Rice, Thomas & Ragland, David R, 2008. "Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Effects of the California Safe Routes to School Program," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt38v7z45z, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leung, Kevin Y.K. & Astroza, Sebastian & Loo, Becky P.Y. & Bhat, Chandra R., 2019. "An environment-people interactions framework for analysing children's extra-curricular activities and active transport," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 341-358.
    2. Qian, Xiaodong & Niemeier, Deb, 2019. "High impact prioritization of bikeshare program investment to improve disadvantaged communities' access to jobs and essential services," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 52-70.
    3. Kamruzzaman, Md. & Hine, Julian, 2013. "Self-proxy agreement and weekly school travel behaviour in a sectarian divided society," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 74-85.
    4. Niemeier, Debbie & Qian, Xiaodong, 2018. "High Impact Prioritization of Bikeshare Program Investment to Improve Underserved Communities’ Access to Jobs and Essential Services," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt7g49j69q, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    5. Hong, Jinhyun & Philip McArthur, David & Stewart, Joanna L., 2020. "Can providing safe cycling infrastructure encourage people to cycle more when it rains? The use of crowdsourced cycling data (Strava)," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 109-121.
    6. Wati, Kala & Tranter, Paul J., 2015. "Spatial and socio-demographic determinants of South East Queensland students’ school cycling," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 23-36.
    7. Qian, Xiaodong & Jaller, Miguel & Circella, Giovanni, 2022. "Equitable distribution of bikeshare stations: An optimization approach," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:19:y:2011:i:4:p:943-949. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-transport-geography .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.