North Lincolnshire Council - Sustainable travel to school strategy

Introduction

The Sustainable Travel to School Strategy is being developed in response to both local and national initiatives. For the last few years many schools in North Lincolnshire have been writing school travel plans. These help schools understand the travel arrangements and aspirations of their pupils, and implement measures that will improve safety on the school journey, reduce the number of car trips and encourage walking, cycling and other sustainable modes of transport to school. We are working towards the Department for Transport (DfT)/Department for Education and Skills (DfES) target of all schools to have an approved plan by 2010. In June 2007 64 per cent (53 of the council’s 83 schools) had an approved plan.

The Education and Inspections Act 2006 places a duty on local councils to promote the use of sustainable transport on the home to school journey.

(Sustainable modes of travel are defined as those that the local council considers may improve the physical well-being of those who use them, the environmental well-being of all or part of the local authorities area, or a combination of the two).

The duty applies to children and young people of sixth form age and below. It includes not only to those who live in our area but also to those who live outside North Lincolnshire who travel into our area to receive education or training.

This is no easy task as, according to figures published by the DfT in their 2003 report Travelling to School: An Action Plan, car journeys to school have doubled, the proportion of pupils walking and cycling to school has decreased sharply. In urban areas in term time, nearly one in five cars at 8.50am is on the school run. In North Lincolnshire approximately 50 per cent of pupils walk to school and 28 per cent travel by car. This is better than the national picture, but historical figures reflect the national trend of a noticeable move to the car over the last seven years.

There are a number of reasons for this, which include:

rising car ownership;
parental preference gives a wider choice of school;
inadequate bus services and high fares in some areas;
worries about bullying on the school bus;
increased traffic and fears about road safety;
increased fears about personal safety, including bullying and abduction;
children carrying more equipment and books to school;
parents under increasing pressure of time;
parents feeling obliged to rely on car travel due to peer pressure;
lack of suitable cycling or safe walking routes.

However there are many benefits. Children and young people who take more exercise are likely to learn better when they are at school or college. The reducing level of exercise has contributed to childhood obesity and childhood obesity often leads to obese adults and associated health risks. Children develop travel preferences when they are at primary school. Many would like to cycle to secondary school rather than go by car. We want to work with schools, parents and their communities to reverse the trend of car use, and provide healthier, more environmentally friendly travel choices.

Aim of the strategy

The overall aim of the strategy will be to increase the numbers of pupils travelling to school by more sustainable modes of transport and reduce dependence on the private car. The strategy will set out the council's approach to the implementation of local solutions that encourage and support more sustainable school travel patterns. We shall have a partnership approach. The Children and Young People’s and Highways and Planning Services will work with schools and colleges, parents, the police, Road Safety Partnership, Primary Health Care Trust and local transport providers to ensure we share the same vision and commitment to improve the health, well-being and educational attainment of our children and young people.

The strategy will be consistent with the five priorities of the Children and Young People’s Plan:

Be Healthy
Stay Safe
Enjoy & Achieve
Make a Positive Contribution
Achieve Economic Well-Being.

The strategy will be subject to a full process of consultation and debate before the council adopts the final version. All North Lincolnshire schools and colleges and other partners will be invited to take part in the strategy’s development and contribute to the resulting action plan.

The development of the strategy is being co-ordinated jointly by the council’s School Transport team and Travel Choices Section. We intend the strategy to include measures that meet the following objectives:

effective protection of the environment;
prudent use of natural resources;
safety and security for people and property;
conditions and services which promote good health;
community involvement and participation in decision making;
helping extended education services to be available to all;
reducing pollution levels;
minimise travel and promote balanced development;
a transport network which maximises access whilst minimising detrimental impacts;
local needs met locally.

It should:

encourage children to travel to school by more sustainable modes of transport;
improve safety and perception of safety for children travelling to school;
support and encourage schools and community groups aiming to develop and promote more sustainable modes of travel;
reduce levels of traffic on routes to school and pollution around schools.

Existing initiatives

A national project, the 'Safe Routes to School' initiative was developed by the environmental charity 'Sustrans' to help children walk and cycle to school independently, change attitudes and reduce car dependency. These are safer routes to individual schools or to a number of schools, which have been assessed to identify improvements that can be made to increase safety on the school journey.

What work have we done on this?

By working with schools via their School Travel Plans and implementing capital development schemes, the council currently carries out projects to improve safety on the journey to school aimed at reducing barriers to walking and cycling. These are often solutions to identified problems such as congestion, parking and perceived or real dangers. They include provision of new railings, traffic calming measures, road markings, signage and car movement restriction zones.

As a result of consultation and travel surveys as a part of their travel plan, Crosby Primary School requested improvements to the area outside the school gates. A target was set to reduce car journeys and encourage walking and cycling. A scheme was developed reducing traffic flow, doubling the width of the footpath and enhancing the image of the area. The scheme has the full support of the school and residents.

So far the council has installed seven school safety zones outside schools whose travel plans have shown speeding and parking to be a problem. These zones are non-enforceable and rely on the full co-operation of drivers and residents to function successfully. The school community and residents are fully consulted and a zone is only installed with their full support. The zones already installed have resulted in an immediate and sustained reduction in car journeys of up to 10 per cent and a safer environment round the school for pedestrians and cyclists.

The council’s road safety officer teaches pedestrian, cycling proficiency and practical road safety skills to pupils. For the last four years, independent travel training programmes have been running at our special schools and further education colleges. These have enabled young people to use public transport by themselves as well as increasing their confidence and self esteem.

We will continue these initiatives and include them in the Strategy. But we believe that schools should be encouraged and supported to develop a wider package of measures to encourage more sustainable travel to school that includes any required safety improvements.

Strategy development

We have already started work on the strategy.

Using school travel plans and school census information on mode of travel to school we are assessing children and young people's travel needs. We intend to map the location of children and young people attending our schools to give us a picture of the travel routes involved
We work closely with local colleges and school sixth forms to understand and plan for their students' travel needs. We also liaise with the people responsible for planning and co-ordinating extended services in schools and 14-19 education programmes to ensure that the exercise covers the full range of access to education and training opportunities
We are carrying out an audit of the infrastructure to support sustainable travel. This includes bus routes, footpaths, cycle ways, road crossing points, traffic calming measures. It will also take account of personal safety and security including poor behaviour and bullying on school buses, walking buses and safe routes to school.

We will supplement this, for example, by holding workshops with partners and following best practice obtained by other authorities.

Performance indicators and targets

We propose such performance indicators as those listed below to measure the objectives of the Sustainable Travel to School Strategy:

Percentage of pupils using sustainable modes of travel to school;
number of accidents on routes to school;
traffic levels on routes to schools;
pollution levels 9subject to the means of measurement being available);
number of school with travel plans.

Targets will be formulated using baseline information collected at the start of the project.

The timetable we have in mind for developing and implementing the strategy is:

1.	Publish draft strategy as ‘statement of Intent’	August 2007
2.	Establish Partnership	September 2007
3.	Hold workshop as a way to draw together an action plan and develop the strategy	October/November 2007
4.	Complete mapping exercise to assess travel needs for initial selection of schools	December 2007
5.	Complete infrastructure Audit for initial selection of schools	December 2007
6.	Consider possible ways of monitoring diversity indicators to show take of travel modes by different sectors of the schools’ community	December 2007
7.	Collect baseline data	December -June 2008
8.	Implement action plan to meet strategy’s objectives and targets	From July 2008
9.	Update the strategy and publish each year on or before 31 August
10.	Review progress	December 2008 and thereafter each six months
11.	Explore possible funding sources	From March 2008
12.	Establish a system of collecting performance data and monitoring progress	From January 2008

We will draw up a more detailed action plan to identify who will be responsible for achieving these tasks.

Related plans and policies

LTP
Home to School Transport Policy
Home to School Transport Policy for pupils with special needs
Post 16 Student Transport Policy
Schools Admissions Policy
Independent Travel Policy
Diversity Policy
School Travel Plan Strategy
Accessibility Strategy
14-19 Education
Code of Conduct for Safe Behaviour on School Buses
Children and Young People’s Plan
Extended Services

Implementation

With limited resources the implementation of the strategy will be phased.

We could prioritise schools to be involved taking the following factors into account:

does the school have a school travel plan?
has the plan been regularly reviewed?
do the governing body support the plan?
are the parents and local community involved?
where is the school located?
what are the existing transport services?
what is the existing infrastructure?
what is the present safety record?
what are the difficulties for children in walking or cycling to school?
what are the current modes of travel from home to school?
are there any particular transport issues to be resolved to enable an education agenda to be taken forward?
what is the cost of making the necessary improvements?
what effect will the investment of resources have on meeting the strategy's objectives and targets?

New school development and Building Schools for theFuture

The Sustainable School Travel Strategy should be integrated within the planning and implementation process of any major capital or restructuring scheme. There is already close co-operation between officers in the Children and Young Peoples, Highways and Planning and Asset Management and Culture Services. This will need to be strengthened to ensure that no opportunity is overlooked to include sustainable travel within new developments.

Funding

The DfES has made an allocation of £13,200 for the development of the strategy in the financial year 2007/8. We expect this to be continued for the next five years. The DfES/DfT currently provides £24,000 for the employment of a School Travel Plan Adviser. This funding may end in March 2008.

The development of the strategy will need to include consideration about the future of the school travel adviser post and the way in which the government grant will be spent. This could include employing consultants to set up the project as some other councils have done and/or providing staffing capacity within the council.

We will also explore other funding sources and maximise funding contained in other capital schemes. These may include: charitable trusts; the 'new opportunities fund'; lottery funding streams, 'Health Action Zone funding', 'Education Action Zone funding', 'Single Regeneration Budgets' and European funding streams.

Monitoring

Through the strategy partnership we will set up a system of monitoring and review. This will include measuring performance against the targets set, consulting governing bodies and comparing North Lincolnshire’s performance with other comparator councils.