Why Students Stopped Walking To School
Beep beep beep beep. The alarm awakens your slumber as you sporadically prepare for school. As you dash, the door firmly shuts behind you.
Certainly, the healthier choice would be to cycle or walk! They bring the benefits of increasing physical activity, boosting metabolism, building independence, and even boosting academic performance. In addition, it contributes to purifying air quality by avoiding car exhaust and carbon dioxide emissions.
In Canada, there has been a whopping 13% decrease in walking and biking to school from 2010 to 2018. Instead, the majority of students arrive at school by car ride. A survey conducted in British Columbia of 23 063 students discovered that 58% of 4th graders and 50% of 7th graders are driven to school. More specifically in Toronto, there has been a 56% decrease from 1986 to 2016. This is where in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton City, only 27.9% of students walk or bike to school in 2016.
You may believe the main issue is caused by the distance from the student’s home to the school. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In 2017 and 2018, a study in Canada found that only 47% of students who live 5 minutes away from school walk or bike.
