The Walking Bus

What Is a Walking Bus?

The walking bus scheme offers pupils a safe, fun and healthy way to travel to and from school. Pupils are escorted along an agreed route by trained adult volunteers. Each walking bus has an adult ‘driver’ at the front and a conductor at the back of the bus. If there are a lot of pupils on the walking bus, it may be necessary to provide more than one ‘conductor’.

How Does It Work?

The walking bus can work in either of two ways:

• Children walk along the agreed route stopping at set ‘bus stops’ along the way, where additional children can join the bus at pre-arranged times.
• A group of children are collected from a designated ‘pick up’ point such as a car park in a public house, community hall or supermarket. Adult volunteers escort children along the agreed route, this is often referred to as a ‘Park and Stride’ scheme.

What Are the Benefits?

Exercise: The walking bus provides an opportunity for everyone to take regular exercise. Evidence shows that more active children become more active adults. A fifteen-minute journey to school can contribute to half the daily recommended exercise for children.

Safety: Children who walk to school on a walking bus are part of a large and visible group, which is supervised by adults and seen safely into school. This reassures parents who are concerned about allowing their children to walk on their own.

Road Sense: The walking bus helps children learn pedestrian skills so that when they begin to walk on their own they are better equipped to deal with traffic.

Socialising: The journey to school gives children a chance to talk and make new friends and, when they’ve arrived at school, they’ve finished chatting and are ready to settle down to learn.

Environment: Every journey made on foot helps reduce the traffic congestion around schools; which will help to reduce pollution and improve local communities.

Easy Breathing: By using a walking bus, children will breathe in the fresh air to wake them up and enable them to arrive at school more alert and ready for their lesson.

First Steps to Setting Up a Walking Bus?

Before a walking bus can begin, volunteers need to be recruited. The proposed ‘bus’ routes must also undergo a risk assessment, to identify the safest and most suitable route to and from school.

All volunteers for the walking bus are checked by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and receive training from Durham County Council’s Road Safety Team before they can escort the walking bus. The children also receive training before the launch of the walking bus

All volunteers and children associated with the walking bus are required to wear high visibility yellow jackets.

For an example of a walking bus in action visit The Walking Bus Case Study page

For more details about the school travel planning programme see School Travel Planning.