"My parents just don't care, they get into the car and drive everywhere. They've not been educated enough." |
The 'school run' is gradually becoming the 'school crawl', but not everywhere. There's a great deal of encouraging action that is starting to change things. Sustrans, the national engineering charity, got things going in 1995 with a three year pilot project involving ten schools in four local authority areas. It has now been extended to 2001. Also in 1995 the Pedestrians Association began its Walk to School campaign. It is nearly two years ago that CILT last examined travel to school, and with the current flurry of activity and plethora of useful guidance coming out this year, now seems a good time to re-visit the subject.
The whole subject was singled out for tackling in last year's Transport White Paper. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) has since set up a School Travel Advisory Group (see the box below) and the Department of Health (DH) is running a Safe and Sound Challenge, which schools can enter; it is part of joint action by the DETR, DH and the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) to promote safer travel to school.
New School Travel Advisory Group (STAG) |
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Meanwhile the Pedestrians Association produces resource packs for children and students for Walk to School Week, and has published a toolkit; and guidance is due (at the time of writing) from Transport 2000 for parents, teachers and governors, also from Sustrans.
So, there is a real flurry of activity. The main aims seem to be making travel to and from school safer, healthier and more environmentally friendly. This article highlights some of the actual action, some of the methods, measures and approaches being tried. It is by no means comprehensive. There is simply too much going on! It merely draws attention to some of the projects taking place, and attempts to demonstrate that change really is possible.
Why should the 'school run' be singled out for action. After all, journeys to and from school represent only 1 in 5 journeys made by children; and educational journeys represent only 4% of all journeys; and just 2% of distance travelled.
Well, firstly, certainly the journey to school, is usually during the morning peak period, so is a significant contributor to congestion, casualties and pollution. In London 'educational escort trips' account for 9% of vehicle mileage between 7.00am and 10.00am. Nationally, 20% of cars in the morning peak are on the school run, yet the average home to school distance is one mile. Secondly, by encouraging more sensible travel at a younger age, it is more likely that such travel might be accepted as normal later in life. Thirdly, children can have a strong influence on their parents. The latter may be more likely to change their travel habits through pressure from their offspring than from a third party.
Surveys suggest that parents recognise that the likelihood of their child being abducted by a stranger is extremely low, but they nevertheless wish to avoid that risk. So if 'stranger danger' is an issue preventing less use of cars, then it needs to be confronted and addressed. School buses and escorted walking might be ways of doing this. A survey in Oxfordshire in 1995 found that stranger danger was mentioned by 85% of all parents as a reason for accompanying their children to school. Traffic danger was cited by 50%.
To overcome security fears some 'Safety House' schemes are being set up around the country, though these have usually been prompted by a murder of a child near a school or the release of a convicted paedophile. A scheme near Cardiff has a network of neighbourhood groups, run by parents with the help of the police. Householders vetted by the police and local monitoring committees display a sign. This alerts children that they can take refuge if they are bullied, frightened of a stray dog or simply feel uneasy. The householder then calls the parents or police and logs the incident. Similar schemes are starting in Portsmouth and Reading, with shops and community centres acting as refuges in the latter.
Let's now look at some examples of where things have been done. The 'walking bus' really is a simple, yet effective, concept - two volunteer parents, one 'driving' and one 'conducting', a trolley to carry school bags and a long line of children. A set route to Wheatfields Junior School is followed, with 'bus stops' to collect other children on the way. It is an initiative being piloted and funded by Hertfordshire County Council as part of a Safe Routes to School project. Other related projects cover green transport education, and school transport plans. The Council is implementing a LEARN package (Local Educational Access Route Network) that will deliver a network of transport links to schools throughout the county. The aims are to reduce child casualties, reduce car trips to school and to provide sustainable forms of transport.
The trolley was originally loaned by a local garden centre but the school is now sponsored by Sainsburys who have had a trolley designed for the purpose. The school has also had offers from firms willing to sponsor the fluorescent jackets worn by the children and the parents.
The 'walking bus' idea was devised by the Council in partnership with civil engineering consultants Mouchel TSC. It originally came from a pupil brainstorming session when talk of car sharing evolved into walk sharing. A ten year old girl suggested that groups of children should walk to school together along the same route every day. Her motivation was clear; she wanted more quality time with her friends to make the long walk to school pass more quickly. Mouchel's research found the idea at a similar stage of development in Australia, Canada and the USA, but no actual schemes yet in operation.
There was overwhelming support from the community at large when public consultation on the idea was held in May 1997. 46 parents offered to be volunteer 'drivers' and 96 children said they would catch the 'bus'.
Mouchel then developed some guidelines in association with the Police, Road Safety Officers, parent groups, pupils, schools and legal advisers.
The scheme started in 1998 with one route. The volunteers are vetted by the police and training and support is provided by the Council's Road Safety Unit. The adult:child ratio must not exceed 1:8. There is a loyalty scheme whereby each pupil collects a sticker each time they use the 'bus'. These are saved and exchanged for free stationery at the school book shop. The award of house points is also used as an incentive to travel.
The start was delayed until four new pedestrian crossings and some traffic calming measures had been implemented. Patronage settled down to ten pupils, led by two parents. But there are now two routes, catering for up to 30 pupils. Mouchel is now working with 30 other schools in Hertfordshire.
The benefits of the scheme are listed in the box below. One of the key points of course is that it is relatively cheap to do, depending on the number of associated measures such as new crossings. But has it been successful and has it reduced car use?
'Before' and 'after' surveys of year 4 pupils has found that 55% came by car and 45% walked in July 1996. In December 1998 only 18% came by car, with 7% now using a bus and 75% walking. 17% walk on their own, 36% with others, and 22% as part of a 'walking bus'.
The 'walking bus' is one of a whole host of initiatives affecting Wheatfield and also the adjacent Sandringham school. Other 'before' and 'after' monitoring of all the initiatives has revealed that between September 1995 and September 1997 there were 6 injury accidents on the nearby roads that have since been treated, but there were none between September 1997 and July 1998. Traffic speed has reduced. The number of pupils arriving by car has fallen from around 40% to about 30%. Various cycling initiatives have resulted in cycling doubling.
Benefits of a 'walking bus' |
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Walking to Wheatfields has increased from 53% to 63% and at Sandringham from 35% to 47%. Each school now has a bus service, used mostly by pupils who were previously driven.
The 1988 Education Act reinforced the position of parents regarding school selection. What of the argument that parental choice of schools is leading to longer journeys? Well, in Hertfordshire the average length of school journeys has certainly increased. But 86% of primary and 40% of secondary pupils still live within a mile of their nearest appropriate school.
The idea of a 'walking bus' is also being tried out in Kent, at a primary school in the county town of Maidstone. Currently a Road Safety Officer escorts the children but the aim is that parents take over this role on the 20 minute 'crocodile route'. Oxfordshire has also just launched a 'walking bus' as part of its 'Better Ways to School' project.
South of London Surrey County Council has been successful in attracting Transport Policies and Programme money from central government for the last three years and a number of safe routes to school projects are in hand. One of the largest has actually been progressed by the Local Agenda 21 group for the area - the Reigate & Banstead Environmental Forum.
The scheme involves seven schools in Redhill. The forum's Transport Working Group worked with the schools, along with Reigate & Banstead Borough Council. Some 1,050 questionnaire responses from pupils were analysed with the assistance of East Surrey College. This was a very good response rate, the schools' population totalling 4,600.
The survey asked questions on how pupils travelled to school, how far, who with, reasons for using a car, and what would induce them to cycle, walk and use public transport. Pupils were also asked to pinpoint unsafe places for cycling and walking and where controlled crossings are needed. The results showed that 34% of pupils already walk. 42% used cars and 24% used cars to travel less than 2 km (1.25 miles). If denied the use of a car, 42% believed they would be allowed to cycle to school.
23% use buses but this is almost entirely accounted for by the largest school having numerous school buses serving its extensive catchment area. Only 1% cycle yet 98% own a bike.
A common reason for using a car was that there was too much to carry - cited by 25% of respondents. Over the last 30 years or so desks with storage space and personal lockers seem to have gone out of vogue.
The forum produced a report of the findings and recommendations included - lower speed limits with 20mph at school entrances, cycle sheds, secure storage lockers - one big reason for car use was the amount of 'clobber' to carry back and forth, more controlled school crossings, and a network of safe segregated walking/cycle routes. The Forum is now urging schools, Police, Borough and County Councils to implement the actions recommended. All the schools have been sent the report and meetings are being held to discuss the findings and explore measures and routes that will assist safer travel to the schools.
An encouraging sign is that the survey is already bearing fruit. The thoroughness and initial findings of the forum's report have enabled the Borough Council to bid for a slice of the County Council's money. As a result, a pedestrian crossing has just been installed, and the road narrowed, on the A25 in Redhill, close to a school and to the Borough Council's leisure centre; see the photo on the previous page. It had been on the cards but the survey brought it forward three years.
The County Council found that between one-third and one half of secondary pupils are taken to school by car. This accounts for 15% of the county's road traffic in peak hours, and the number of car journeys to school has gone up three fold since 1974.
Here they have been busy encouraging more use of buses to school. Surveys were done in three towns, Bognor Regis, East Grinstead and Horsham. There were some interesting findings:
A trial was launched in Bognor Regis, affecting two secondary schools, to encourage more bus travel. This comprised:
The result was that bus use increased from 30 pupils a day to 150. The reasons for changing to using buses were that it was cheaper, pupils now know where they run, and they run closer to homes.
Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, has a very good example of a school that is tackling travel to school. Sciennes Primary School in south Edinburgh has 600 pupils. A survey with a response rate of 62% found that 57% walk, 5% use a bus, and 35% are driven. Only 3% cycle but 43% said they would like to. 23% of those driven to school lived less than a mile away.
A group of parents, the Sciennes Safe Routes to School Group, independent of the school and its board, have published a report. It calls for a road closure, traffic calming, pedestrian crossings, more crossing patrols, and 20mph limit throughout the school's catchment area.
The school received funding through a European Comenius project. This is a three year project in conjunction with schools in Denmark and Greece. Children did traffic surveys, wrote letters to council officials, and prepared a slide and tape show.
The main reason for car use was that the parent was going on somewhere else, e.g. to work. However, several children have now encouraged their parents to cycle to work so that they can be escorted to school by bike. Some children now arrive by trailer bike, child trailer or child seats on an adult bike.
Several families got together in 1998 to do a 'walking train'. This seems to be the same as the St Albans 'walking bus', in that it involves parents taking turns to escort a group of children to school. The school saw this as formalising a process that often happened already on an informal basis. A 'cycling train' is a possibility but needs to await a cycle crossing and training.
Two lessons learnt from installing standard 'Sheffield' U-shaped cycle racks is that they are too high for children's bikes, and they make very tempting gym bars!
Is change really possible? The answer has to be - Yes! Certain actions and measures do actually work. It is simply a case of getting on and doing them. Of course everywhere is different, but there is now ample evidence and case studies of what to do and how to arrive at the right set of measures for particular situations.
Cycle use is usually very low despite most children owning bikes. Some of the above examples show that nearly all pupils own bikes but virtually none use them to and from school.
A survey in 1995 based on 315 Oxfordshire primary school children found that only 2% cycled to school, yet 98% owned a bike. Furthermore 85% cycled in their home street and 51% cycled within half a mile of their home. So there has to be great potential here for change. Developing a network of safe cycle routes, plus secure parking at schools, would clearly be helpful in encouraging more use to and from school. Indeed at one secondary school in Oxford 77% of pupils now arrive by bike, with 16% walking and only 3% by car.
Similarly, walking is now much safer in Inner Leicester, following extensive traffic calming (it should, of course, be called driver calming). Road casualties have been cut by 50%, average speeds are down from 28 miles per hour (mph) to 19mph and the amount of traffic is down 30%. In Winchester traffic calming has cut average speeds in two rat-runs near schools from 45mph to 12mph.
Buses have a part to play depending on the size of a school's catchment area. But what should be the priority - getting pupils onto buses or bikes? This could be an interesting debate. Maybe some of the West Sussex pupils using the new buses would be better on bikes. However, much depends on age, distance and the existence of safe cycling networks.
The University of Westminster has surveyed local authorities on the level of activity on safe routes to school projects. Their findings were published in 1998.
Of 241 responding authorities only 10% had implemented a project on a permanent basis but a further 18% had implemented trials. The survey found full safe routes to school projects being implemented at 359 schools in the areas covered by the respondents. This is equivalent to less than 2% of the 26,000 or so schools in England and Wales.
It was interesting to find that the most common objective for projects, cited by about 90% of respondents was road safety, closely followed by sustainability. Congestion reduction was cited by 78%, health by 75% and air quality by only 57%.
Even more interesting was that the authority's education department was only involved in half of the active authorities. Road safety was cited by 84% of respondents as the department involved, with transport named by 70%.
Finally, of the 32 authorities that had done monitoring, only 4 had measured pollution levels around schools and only 2 the fitness levels of pupils. Whereas 18 had done traffic counts and 15 accident analysis.
With plenty of case studies, plus a plethora of guidance emerging during 1999 there can be no excuse for schools not doing their homework on safer and greener travel. Schools have a major role to play in traffic reduction and healthier travel.
The London Planning Advisory Committee's recent consultation on a Road Traffic Reduction Strategy for London recognises the role of School Travel Plans. Any school in London that has not yet done a survey of pupils' (and staff's) travel, and prepared an action plan to modify travel should get a hundred lines immediately - "We must organise more sensible travel to school". How about a target for schools to have at least done surveys by a certain date?
The Transportation and the Education Departments of London's local authorities should be talking to each other and organising some presentations to parents, teachers and governors as to what is possible. And Planning Departments must ensure that School Travel Plans are part of the planning agreements associated with new or expanding schools.
This was the case in Camden, where planning permission for a school to expand was on condition that it prepared and implemented a Plan to reduce car use. The objective of the plan was to reduce the proportion of car trips to the school by 30% over three years and to maintain or further reduce this proportion thereafter. Video surveys have subsequently revealed that car use fell 23% during the first and second years of the plan.
Child Accident Prevention Trust - runs Child Safety Week every June, and has a scheme for providing low cost cycle helmets through schools.
18-20 Farringdon Lane, London EC1R 3AU
T. 020 - 7608 3828
Children's Play Council - piloting Home Zones, to create zones with speeds of 10mph or less in residential areas.
8 Wakley Street, London EC1V 7QE
T. 020 - 7843 6016
Department of Health's Safe and Sound Challenge hotline
P.O. Box 18, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire LE13 1ZF
T. 0870 - 901 0906
http://www.doh.gov.uk/safetrav
Department of the Environment, Transport & the Region's School Travel Advisory Group:
T. 020 - 7890 3395
http://www.detr.gov.uk
Eco-Schools - a European scheme to promote the need to change lifestyles. Managed in the U.K. by the Tidy Britain Group. For a handbook and the booklet on transport contact them at:
TBG, Elizabeth House, The Pier, Wigan WN3 4EX
T. 01942 - 824620
fax 01942 - 824778
Local Authority Road Safety Officers Association
Wendy Broome, Herefordshire County Council, Road Safety Unit, 96 Victoria Street, St Albans AL1 3TG
T. 01727 - 816960
fax 01727 - 816979
E-mail: wendy.broome@hertscc.gov.uk
National Society for Clean Air - Transport Emissions Assessment for Schools Pack.
136 North Street, Brighton BN1 1RG
T. 01273 - 326313
fax 01273 - 739802
http://www3.mistral.co.uk/cleanair
E-mail: info@nsca.org.uk
Pedestrians Association and TravelWise - jointly promoting 24-28 May as Walk to School Week. For information, guides and resource packs contact the PA:
31-33 Bondway, Vauxhall, London SW8 1SJ
T. 020 - 7820 1010
fax 020 - 7820 8208
Reigate & Banstead Environmental Forum
contact via David Hurdle at CILT.
T. 020 - 7247 1302
fax 020 - 7247 4725
E-mail: cilt@dial.pipex.com
Road Danger Reduction Forum - a consortium of road safety professionals working to achieve real child safety.
c/o City of York Safety Unit, 9 St Leonard's Place, York YO1 2ET
T. 01904 - 551331
St Albans 'Walking Bus'
Julia Moreland, Mouchel TSC, The Colonnades, Beaconsfield Road, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 8YD
T. 01707 - 280173
E-mail: julia_moreland@mouchel.com
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Gary Noble, Environment Department, Hertfordshire County Council, County Hall, Hertford SG13 8DN
T. 01992 - 556042
E-mail: gary_noble@hertscc.gov.uk
Safe Routes to School at Sciennes, Edinburgh
http://www.sol.co.uk/s/sciennes/sr2s/report.htm
Suzy Lamplugh Trust - provides a 'Homesafe' video and resource pack for teachers, and 'Step out with confidence' courses for parents and children.
14 East Sheen Avenue, London SW14 8AS
T. 020 - 8392 1839
fax 020 - 8392 1830
E-mail: training@suzylamplugh.org
http://www.suzylamplugh.org
Sustrans - lots of publications and a video on Safe Routes to School, free and for sale, including Safe Routes to Schools Teachers' Resource Pack. Published best practice on School Travel Plans.
35 King Street, Bristol BS1 4DZ
T. 0117 - 915 0100
fax 0117 - 915 0124
http://www.sustrans.org.uk
Transport 2000 is preparing a practitioners guide for schools:
Walkden House, 10 Melton Street, London NW1 2EJ
T. 020 - 7388 8386
fax 020 - 7388 2481
E-mail: transport2000@transport2000.demon.co.uk
TravelWise - the national transport awareness initiative adopted by over 70 local authorities.
Howerd Booth, National Secretary, c/o Environment Directorate, Lancashire County Council, Guild House, Preston, PR1 8RD
T. 01772 - 263649
fax 01772 - 263833
E-mail: howerdb@travelwisenet.com
Young Transnet - an educational project, launched 26-30 April 1999 (National Transport Online Week) that uses information technology to give children a say in transport issues.
T. 020 - 7843 6325
http://www.yptin.org.uk
E-mail: yptin@ncb.org.uk