Educational
Resources

Instructions

Discuss the following in your class.

Introduction – Begin by introducing students to what transportation planning is – someone who designs mobility options to move people and goods across a city or town. They often work on transportation issues and think of ways to move cars, public transit vehicles like buses, freight and pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

Modes of Transportation

Engage with your students by asking them about various means of transportation. This could include:

Walking
Biking
Riding the bus
Driving a car
Hiring a taxi or rideshare

Next, ask your students if they can think of any alternative modes of transportation. This might include mobility assistance such as wheelchairs, scooters or other devices that help those who may have mobility challenges.

Understanding Community Needs

Lead a conversation about the importance of meeting diverse community needs. If your students were responsible for planning transit options, how would they do it? Write down their ideas on the board.

Some thought starters could include:

Who needs to use the bus? And why?
What are accessible options for riders with mobility challenges?
Can you take a bike on a public transit bus?
Should kids have safe and accessible options to get around town? What would that look like?

Introduce the “Make Your City BusReady” worksheet

Using the city map on the worksheet, students are tasked with creating bus routes that solve specific problems. The city map is zoned, with each zone consisting of its own challenges. Using limited transit resources, students act as transit planners to solve these transportation challenges. The teacher acts as lead transportation manager and must approve of the students’ transit proposals.

• One worksheet per student.
• Have students analyze the map and plan transit routes to connect the city and the community members.
• Optional: Split the students up into groups and have them plan the bus routes together, then present to the class.

Discuss the Design Process

Introduce the process of design thinking in relation to ADST curriculum. Design thinking is a human-centred approach to problem-solving, which prioritizes empathy for user experience. In this case, students are asked to consider empathizing with community needs and using those insights to inform design decisions in their transit plan proposals.

Discuss Road Hierarchy

Highways: These are the main roads designed for fast travel over long distances. They connect major cities and regions, have the highest speed limits and usually have multiple lanes.
Arterials: These roads are a bit smaller and slower. They connect highways to large urban or town areas, carry a lot of traffic and often have traffic lights or roundabouts at major intersections.
Collectors: These are even smaller and slower. They gather traffic from local streets and funnel it to the arterial roads. They’re in residential areas and often have lower speed limits.
Streets: These are the smallest, local roads where houses and businesses are. They have the lowest speed limits, are used for direct access to properties and usually have the least amount of traffic.

Encourage students to think about these different types of roads and how they connect to different parts of a city. Ask students questions like:

Should large buses carrying people to work travel along arterial roads that connect residential zones to commercial zones? Or should they zig zag through small, quiet residential streets?
Should people have to walk far to catch the bus? Where should the bus stops go?

Learning Objectives

To think bigger on how transit works and how to plan for a BusReady community for all.
Apply STEAM skills to a practical transit planning scenario.
Recognize the importance of building empathy for diverse transit riders and its impact on the community’s well-being.

Core Competencies

ADST

Applied design, skills and technologies are forefront in this lesson.

Critical and Reflective Thinking

Students may reflect on learning new ways of thinking. Students will learn how to look past surface level and see what goes on behind the scenes when planning transit routes for a city.

Collaboration

Group work is essential for children to learn how to work in a team environment.

Extensions & Modifications

Get Creative

Consider asking students to get creative by adding amenities to their worksheets such as parks or other attractions they may see around town.

• For students who may be eager to do more, consider having them build their own city map or download a real-life city map and task students to design a new transit infrastructure for that city.

STEAM

Encourage building STEAM skills through real-life data collection. Ask students to record notes while riding the bus about what they can observe. This can include:

How busy does the bus get?
How many riders may require courtesy seating?
What part of town do riders on your route come from?
Are most riders on your bus adults going to work? Or kids going to school?
What kind of roads does your bus drive on? Is it an arterial or collector road?
Why do you think your bus route goes down one of these roads?

Jobs in Public Transit

Consider discussing jobs in public transit to encourage kids to think about future STEAM careers in transportation. The worksheet activity applies skills used in jobs such as:

Transit Planner: They use science, tech and math to design transit networks.
Civil engineer: They design things like roads, bridges and tunnels.
Transportation analyst or urban data scientist: They use math to study transit systems and propose improvements.
Environmental engineer: They work on sustainable transit projects to minimize our impact on the environment.

Group Exercise

For a group exercise session, consider assigning each student a job, such as transit planner, civil engineer, transportation analyst, data scientist or environmental engineer.

Assessment

Review each student’s transit system design for understanding of road hierarchy and application of design thinking principles.
Evaluate group plans for effective communication, collaboration and ability to meet community needs.
Assess the ability to utilize STEAM skills in analyzing data and applying it to their planning.