Raktim MitraRyerson University · School of Urban and Regional Planning
Raktim Mitra
PhD
About
32
Publications
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1,483
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Citations since 2017
Publications
Publications (32)
Unsafe cycling environments are often hypothesized as a key factor behind a gender gap in bicycling. We examine gendered safety perceptions using data from street intercept surveys across 10 urban and suburban study areas in the Toronto region, Canada, five with on-street bicycle infrastructure, and five without. Results reinforce that cyclists who...
Cycling facilities have become a widely used sustainable transportation policy tool, but their impacts on reduced car dependence are difficult to isolate. This paper presents the findings from a household survey conducted in 17 neighbourhoods in the Toronto region, Canada, some with a recently built cycling facility and some without. Results indica...
The current COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted daily behaviours of children and youth. Yet, little is known about how they are mentally coping with the pandemic-time changes to their lives. This study explores children and youths’ self-reported subjective well-being (SWB) during the pandemic, and provides novel insights into the correlates of potentia...
Shared e-scooter systems are operating across hundreds of cities worldwide. However, limited understanding of the user demand, as well as how this demand varies across individuals with various transportation preferences living in different urban contexts, is a key barrier to developing policy and regulations. This paper begins to close this gap by...
Children's independent mobility (CIM) is an important consideration in planning as it has been found to positively relate to their physical, social, psychological, cognitive, and economic well-being. However, children are often a marginalized group when it comes to transport planning, with their needs not being directly considered and many outcomes...
Bicycle is a single-track pedal-driven vehicle that is used across the world for both transportation and recreational purposes. As a human powered transportation option, it is often considered a healthier, more environmentally sustainable and socially equitable alternative to short automobile trips. In the late-19th century, bicycling was seen as a...
Recent years have seen the emergence of a literature focused on physical activity outcomes among children, in relation to their transportation and bodily movement. As this literature grows, the importance of an integrated approach to understand a child's movement/ mobility behaviour is beginning to be recognized in policy and practice. Few studies...
With the growing environmental and health concerns associated with automobile-dependence, municipalities across the Western World are investing in cycling facilities to encourage drivers and transit users to take up cycling as a mode of transportation, a process that is known as the travel mode substitution. This study explored the potential impact...
What is the relationship between childhood, transportation, and land use? What are the social and environmental—along with political, economic, and policy-related factors and forces—that produce transport in childhood? How do we create places where childhood is considered more explicitly in transport and land-use planning? What is the effect of res...
A consistent decline in active school transportation among North American children has drawn attention of those concerned with children's health and wellbeing. Consequently, an emerging literature has explored the enablers and barriers to walking and cycling, including the role of the neighbourhood environment. This study makes a novel contribution...
A child's school travel behaviour may change with the transition toward adolescence. However, the topic remains understudied in current literature. This paper examines school travel mode choice behaviour of 11-year-old children and 14–15 year old youth in Toronto, Canada. Morning period school trip data was analysed using multinomial logit models....
Raktim Mitra, Anne Winters, Nancy Smith Lea (Toronto Centre for Active Transportation- TCAT), Paul M. Hess
Toronto Centre For Active Transportation (TCAT), Raktim Mitra, Paul M. Hess
December, 2014
The purpose of this study was to examine the association between the hours of outdoor play and objective measures of physical activity and identify the correlates of outdoor playing time in terms of parental perceptions of the neighbourhood environment. Time spent in outdoor play, both on a typical weekday and a typical weekend day, and neighbourho...
The health benefits of walking and cycling to and from school, also called active school transportation (AST), are well documented. In the context of a declining trend in AST across the Western world, this paper examines school-travel behavior of 11-year-old children in Toronto, using multiple cross-sectional data from 1986, 1996, and 2006 Transpor...
Professional and popular interest in active school transportation (walking and cycling) is matched by an emerging literature on this topic. This paper explores school travel behavior of 11-year old children in Toronto, Canada. In particular, the effects of the neighborhood environment and caregiver-child travel interactions on travel mode choice we...
Children’s independent mobility (CIM), or a child’s freedom to explore their neighbourhood unsupervised, is important for their psychological development and potentially enables daily physical activity. However, the correlates of CIM remain under-studied particularly in terms of the influence of the neighbourhood environment. Within this context, c...
Children's independent mobility (CIM) is critical to healthy development in childhood. The physical layout and social characteristics of neighbourhoods can impact opportunities for CIM. While global evidence is mounting on CIM, to the authors' knowledge, Canadian data on CIM and related health outcomes (i.e., physical activity (PA) behaviour) are m...
The neighbourhood environment may enable active aging by allowing the integration of walking into an older adult's daily routine. This study explores the relationship between the neighbourhood built environment and walking among a small group of older adults in a large suburban municipality in Canada. In-depth interviews using a photo-voice approac...
Walking to school is associated with higher levels of physical activity. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school travel mode and physical activity using a sampling frame that purposefully locates schools in varying neighbourhoods.
Cross-sectional survey of 785 children (10.57 +/- 0.7 years) in Toronto, Canada. Physi...
Interest in active school transportation has emerged in response to concern over the reduced levels of physical activity (PA) among children. PA derived from active school travel may have important implications for the healthy development of children and youth. This article reviews transportation, urban planning, health and environmental psychology...
Objective:
A child's opportunity for physical activity and the safety of engaging in activity are influenced by built environment (BE) elements. This study examined the relationship of neighbourhood type and socio-economic status (SES) with activity using a sampling frame that purposely located schools in varying neighbourhoods to ensure that ther...
Objective:
Climatic conditions may enable or deter active school transportation in many North American cities, but the topic remains largely overlooked in the existing literature. This study explores the effect of seasonal climate (i.e., fall versus winter) and weekly weather conditions (i.e., temperature, precipitation) on active travelling to sc...
Researchers, practitioners and community-based organizations have emphasized built environment interventions to encourage active school transportation, a practice that can contribute to the overall physical activity needs of children. This paper examines the potential influence of the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) on statistical modeling of...
Walking to or from school may provide a regular source of physical activity for children and youth. To improve walking practices among this younger population, urban planners emphasize the importance of built environment interventions. Empirical understanding of the potential relationship between the built environment and active school transportati...
Interest in utilitarian sources of physical activity, such as walking to school, has emerged in response to the increased prevalence of sedentary behavior in children and youth. Public health practitioners and urban planners need to be able to survey and monitor walking practices in space and time, with a view to developing appropriate intervention...
This study describes temporal and spatial trends in active transportation for school trips in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada's largest city-region.
Proportions of trips by travel mode to and from school were estimated and compared for children (11-13 years) and youth (14-15 years). Data were drawn from the 1986, 1996, 2001, and 2006 versions of t...
In this article, the authors briefly summarize the status of road accident and fatalities in Bangladesh in 2005. Although the accident rate did rise by 43% between 1982 and 200, researchers are more alarmed by the 400% increase in accident fatalities, which they account for by the increases in population, total road length, and modal share of road...
Projects
Project (1)
DOORS provides a forum for information and research dissemination on sustainable innovation, sustainable research, and learning materials concerning sustainable development. It is led by selected 112 members with influence in publication in sustainability. The group review articles, write technical notes, work on letters and agenda papers, and exhibits ideas in areas of sustainability science. Sustainability science is a cutting-edge applied sustainability on all aspects of bridging the gaps between scientific learning development and scientific research implementation addressing <sustainability> (as a whole). Interdisciplinary members in this group are gathered based on publications spanning the different aspects near to sustainability. Members featured are relevant to an international audience, with a focused theme, and cover timely topics that can be applied on sustainability science studies. (Members will receive deliberations soon and receive the reason for the additions will be delivered to email soon, as of now -- to respect the members will, there will be no misused of citation and no misused of reference name of scientist name
