Analyzing Factors Affecting School Travel Mode Choice in the United States

This study explores the dynamic factors influencing school travel mode choice in the United States across three distinct periods: pre-COVID-19 (Fall 2019), during COVID-19 (Spring 2021), and post-COVID-19 (Fall 2021). A survey methodology is used to collect data on the parents’ preferred school trip mode choice, with 1,117 responses collected nationwide via the Qualtrics XM platform in June 2023. Preliminary analysis shows that most students live within 1-3 miles of their school, suggesting opportunities to walk or cycle to school. However, the most common mode of school transportation is the personal vehicle, followed by the school bus. To achieve the study’s objective Amazon’s AutoGluon, an open-source library of machine learning models, will be utilized to analyze a range of independent variables including locale, household size, vehicle ownership, parent’s level of education, income, and employment status, distance from school, school stage and number of children enrolled at the respective school stages. Within this context, six school travel mode choices will be examined encompassing parents dropping and picking the students, school bus, walking, public transportation, carpooling, and cycling. The findings can be utilized to improve understanding and modeling of parents’ school mode choice preferences. They can also make a significant contribution to the post-pandemic school transportation policies and in similar situations that limit public transportation activities.
Keywords: COVID-19, school mode choice, School bus, AutoGluon, machine learning