Here’s a good little video from Streetfilms on measures being taken in New York City to increase the number of children walking to school:
It is very easy to get carried away with talking about big transport projects all the time on a blog such as this, but I do often think that the combination of many many small improvements, such as efforts to encourage children to walk to school more, can make as big a difference to congestion, reduced pollution, health benefits and so forth as many of the larger projects.
For example, throughout Auckland over the past decade we have seen the development of the “Walking School Bus” concept, which was actually brought to New Zealand by one of my former lecturers, because of problems faced by the exceptionally large Gladstone Primary School in Mt Albert. By creating “bus routes”, with the bus being a whole pile of kids with a couple of supervising adults, it is now possible and safe for many more children to easily walk to school than previously.
I’ve always thought it’s such a fantastic idea because there are such a vast number of benefits:
- Reduced congestion from less parents driving their kids to school (which usually happens in the morning peak).
- Reduced pollution from fewer cars on the road.
- Improved exercise for children and the parents taking part.
- Increasing social interaction between children and between parents.
- Increasing a child’s understanding of the environment around where they live and go to school.
I get the feeling that the economic “payoff” for whatever limited public money gets invested in programmes like Walking School Buses must be huge. A number of peak time cars off the road for the cost of a few high-vis vests and a booklet, that’s a pretty amazing opportunity. It makes me wonder what could be done to further promote Walking School Buses, especially if their benefits are so widespread and significant. I would be really interested in hearing about experiences people have with the system that sits behind the Walking School Buses – and whether anything could be done to further improve them.
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IMO, one of the best ideas that Len Brown campaigned on was getting every school in Auckland to have a travel plan for students, to minimise the number of school-related car journeys and thus tackle a significant contributor to morning-peak congestion and a serious risk to pupil safety. It’s sadly ironic that so many road injuries around schools are caused by parents whose paranoia about Little Johnny and Little Susie being abducted or molested triggers the desperate need for them to drive their children three blocks to the local school.
Haven’t heard much about it lately, and wondering if you know what’s happened to it?
North Shore City had a very active team promoting school travel plans and some great successes, it takes a little more than just hi-viz jackets to implement a walking school bus, as things like ped crossing placements and other infrastructure items need to be looked at, as well as ensuring that they carry on when enthusiastic parents move on out of the school with their kids
nevertheless, they are win-win projects and one of my favourites is Belmont School (working from memory here!) which has about 40% of the kids biking to school
one study showed that walking to school independently aided the child’s cognitive growth and that learning to navigate the streets had huge developmental spin offs, sadly I didn’t keep a copy of the report and haven’t been able to find one on-line, merde!
Indeed. This video is absolutely beautiful. It just makes sense.
If we literally ranked every transport project (in the same way as ACC ranks treatments and only funds the cost effective ones), we’d see things like this done in an instant. Instead, we have a system that considers things in a very piecemeal way.
Not to mention that the externalities here are incredible and most of them are never even considered – ill health, pollution and toxic emissions locally, climate change, noise, stress effects on drivers and communities, isolation of driven children from their communities, and the high costs of cars themselves. These things are indeed hard to quantify, but that’s no reason to ignore them entirely, as we seem to do.
In Auckland, for example, AT refuses to even consider putting in unsignalled crossings between a railway station and a university, because they anticipate a future motorway project in 10 years time.
I always thought that back road through routes (which aren’t always obvious through alleys and along creeks and such) should be obviously signposted and made into a suburban-wide system, with a strict grammar on the signs and the routes such that it is easy to use. Then add maps on signs and make decent maps of the whole city. If there are principal routes then they can have money spent on them improving surfaces, etc.
Walking along main roads in the noise and stink zone of the traffic is unpleasant, but a block or two in parallel there are pleasant routes.
Designed well it would get more people walking to transport nodes and getting kids to schools. The design process would also identify gaps and where underpasses, bridges, stairs and alleyways would be useful.
Same goes in suburban Auckland, suburban Wellington, and down to the smallest town.
Information about Auckland’s TravelWise programme is here:
http://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/moving-around/school-travel-plans/AboutSchoolTravel/Pages/default.aspx
I did once speak to somebody at one of the councils about this and they told me that a study had shown it had a very high BCR. I think they are too dependent right now on enthusiastic volunteers – you really need paid co-ordinators backing them up or there is a risk they fall down when a keen parent leaves. I can’t imagine the cost of wages for a few co-ordinators would be more than the benefits.
“it takes a little more than just hi-viz jackets”
Why does it take high-viz jackets at all? Why act like walking is something to be afraid of? Why dress our kids like they are prisoners (of the roading system)? You will notice the children in the film are NOT wearing high viz jackets. Bloody safety culture.
Hi viz jackets are worn by the adults- although I agree that they are not needed as such, they are worn as they raise profile of the sponsors of WSBs in Auckland.( some kids wear jackets becouse they like to and ask if they can, however) Encouragingly in a survey of WSB volunteers last year, when asked what you would like the WSB programme in Auckland look like in 5yrs- the majority response was ” No WSb programme as walking would be the norm”