Route network planning for children safer journey to school

The safety aspect of primary school children’s always becoming a first priority concerned in the world as children at this age tend to vulnerable easily in unwanted cases such as road crashes, crime or kidnapping. The safety issue is not limited to the environment in classroom, but extends to the environment surrounding school area. Road safety is crucial as children travel every day to school (from house to school vice versa) with different mobility mode. Congested traffic condition with insufficient road safety aspect makes the journey to school is no more safe to walk or cycle. Fear of road accidents makes parents and children tend to use the motorised vehicle as an ideal mobility mode to travel to school. This added more problems to existing high traffic volume at peak hour. The route safety aspect for the school siting parameter is seldom held forth in any document or regulation by agencies related. Therefore, this paper aimed to gain insight about the safety route parameter for children to walk and cycle to school. The Geographic Information System (GIS) and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) tools are used in this study. The research methodology comprises of interview with experts, site visits and questionnaire distribution to selected primary school in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. The route network analysis is used by integrating data from questionnaire with the digitised map as to analyse the existing road safety measures. Safety parameter such as distance, traffic situation and, mobility mode were analysed in order to understand the problem and rank the most consent parameter. The results of this study demonstrate that the proposed safer route to school needs children to take extra distance and time.