Introduction

GO by Bus/School Pool was a two year grant awarded to Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) TO School program ending on June 30, 2011. The Grant was funded by the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program with additional support from the City of Boulder and BVSD. Other working partners were RTD and RideArrangers (Denver Regional Council of Governments). What follows is the original grant project summary.

Project Summary

 The GO by Bus/School Pool outreach & marketing project is an opportunity to strengthen the collaborative commitment among the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), the city of Boulder, and the Denver Metro Council of Governments (DRCOG) by offering transportation options that reduce vehicle miles traveled and congestion in the vicinity of middle schools. The program will include financial incentives, education/encouragement initiatives, and travel services to reduce the number of trips made by parents driving students to school, as well as encouraging public transit use by students for non-school trips. This program also compliments on-going Safe-Routes-to-School efforts on behalf of BVSD and the city of Boulder.

The program has two main components: 

GO by bus: This program will encourage middle school students to use public transit. Most of the middle schools in the city of Boulder are served by high frequency Community Transit Network, with buses coming every 10 minutes. Among many middle school students, riding the bus is seen as cool, as it offers an element of independence. This program seeks to enhance that image, provide support and incentives, and address concerns that parents may have.

School Pool: GO Boulder and BVSD will work to increase participation in this successful carpool matching program administered by DRCOG’s Ride Arrangers. Currently, no middle schools within the city of Boulder participate. The project coordinator will encourage local schools to enroll in the School Pool program, and help promote the program throughout the community.

Program Scope and Work Plan

Introduction

Unlike a generation ago, when most children walked, biked, or bused to school, today many children are driven to school. Fueled by the longer distances resulting from open enrollment, individually delivering children to school has many negative consequences. It increases traffic congestion and greenhouse gases, deprives children of the community they receive when carpooling, and quashes the independence they acquire when learning how to ride a city bus on their own. In addition, parents who might otherwise bus, bike or carpool to work themselves, end up driving alone to their workplace. This further aggravates traffic congestion, crowded parking lots, and air quality. We are confident that journey to school trips for middle school students is a source of congestion and vehicle miles traveled that could be reduced. The GO by Bus/School Pool outreach & marketing project is an opportunity to strengthen the collaborative commitment between the city of Boulder, Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) and the Denver Metro Council of Governments (DRCOG) of offering transportation options that reduce vehicle miles traveled and congestion in the vicinity of middle schools. The program will include financial incentives, education/encouragement initiatives, and travel services to reduce the number of trips made by parents driving students to school, as well as encouraging public transit use by students for non-school trips.

By focusing on encouraging carpooling and public transit use, this program complements the strong efforts of the Safe Routes to School program to encourage children to walk and bike to school. The program has two main components:

School Pool: BVSD and GO Boulder will work to increase participation in this successful carpool matching program administered by DRCOG’s Ride Arrangers. Currently, no middle schools within the city of Boulder participate. The GO program coordinator will encourage local schools to enroll in the School Pool program, and help promote the program throughout the community. To increase use of School Pool, BVSD will work with the PTA, parent champions and principals to enroll the entire school population in the School Pool program. Once a student is enrolled, his/her parents can choose to opt-out of the program. By enrolling all students and then asking students who don’t wish to participate to opt-out, the School Pool Program has had great success.

GO by bus: This program will encourage middle schoolers to use public transit. Most of the middle schools in the city of Boulder are served by high frequency Community Transit Network, with buses coming every 10 minutes. Among many middle-schoolers, riding the bus is seen as cool, as it offers an element of independence. This program seeks to enhance that image, provide support and incentives, and address concerns that parents may have. To identify how to enhance the image of the bus system, focus groups will be used to understand what students do and don’t like about the bus and what they see as the barriers to more frequent bus use. An outreach and marketing campaign would focus on messages that address the barriers identified as well as educate and encourage both students and parents about using public transit and joining School Pool. It also will include incentives and prizes for participants. The program coordinator will conduct outreach to participating school communities, including contacting each school, doing presentations, enrolling families in the School Pool program and coordinating the registration processes with DRCOG.

Program Evaluation

The program would kick off with extensive survey work to establish baseline travel habits and identify barriers to participating. Focus groups of parents and students would further explore concerns about students riding public transit, and would help to identify effective strategies and marketing messages. A follow-up survey will be conducted to measure a change in travel habits and parent/student opinions and evaluate the success of the program. The goal is a 30% reduction in number of students who arrive to school by single occupant vehicles. The same groups would be surveyed before and after the program. The initial focus groups will be done in person with small groups. This initial discussion will be about attitudes about using the bus. The travel diary-type surveys can be done on-line.

Our package of outreach, marketing and financial incentives will emphasize changing the behavior of middle school students and auto driving parents/families. We will strive for the mutually supporting effort of both increasing the number of students participating in School Pool and riding the bus. This project will better manage travel demand and make more efficient use of transportation infrastructure, to ease congestion, improve air quality and to encourage a shift to alternate modes from the SOV. It also will foster independence and other life skills among middle school students.

To evaluate and track VMT reduced, the following key inputs would be needed for the before and after surveys:

• Number of days traveled
• Mode of travel by trip and trip purpose
• Distance of one-way trips by destination/trip purpose
• A student tally survey

A qualitative aspect will be used to compliment the quantitative. This will be accomplished by using before and after focus group data to show the impact of the program on the population’s travel behavior.

Program Goals

The goal is a 30% reduction in number of students who arrive to school by single occupant vehicles.