School Travel Planning
Most people accept that transporting children to school by car is not the best option for their health, physical and social development or the environment. Yet it is part of today’s culture and it’s growing.
Over the past twenty years the percentage of children travelling to school by car has doubled: almost 40% of primary and 20% of secondary aged students are now driven to and from school each day.
Most of these journeys are less than two miles. At 8.50am in the morning, almost 1 in 5 cars on the road are on the school run. There is no doubt that this causes major congestion problems not only on the routes to school but also around the school gates. One way to reverse this trend would be to produce a School Travel Plan.
A School Travel Plan sets out a package of measures, which aim to both reduce the number of single occupancy car trips made on the school journey and to encourage more pupils and parents to walk, cycle, car share or use public transport on the journey to and from school. The School Travel Plan also raises awareness about travel issues while educating everyone involved about the reasons why these changes are important.
At Durham County Council, the school travel planning initiative was formerly referred to as the ‘Safer Routes to School programme’. However, this tended to result in a focus on road safety and engineering only. While road safety is integral to school travel planning, this title did not encompass the wider health, social and environmental benefits that developing a School Travel Plan can bring.
School Travel Plans are tailored to the individual travel needs of each school community with each school developing a package of measures to address their particular travel needs. For this reason a School Travel Plan may include enabling and encouraging initiatives, engineering measures or both.
For further information on what may be contained in this package of measures, find out about a safer route to school, encouragement and enablement of the Plan, engineering measures and case studies.
The First Step
The DfT/DfES are encouraging all schools to have a School Travel Plan by the year 2010. If your school would like to be part of the programme then see
STP Application Notes.pdf (24 pages, 1792kb) and read about having a School Travel Plan.
Gathering Information
Once schools have committed to developing a School Travel Plan, the first stage is for the travel questionnaire to be distributed amongst parents and pupils. The purpose of the questionnaire is to determine the current travel patterns. The parental questionnaires give an opportunity for parents to identify measures that would encourage them to travel by a means other than the family car. The pupil questionnaires include information on their preferred mode of travel.The Next Stage
Once the questionnaires have been completed and collected they are analysed and the findings reviewed by the School Travel Planning Working Group.
The Working Group consists of school staff, governors, parents, pupils, police representatives, school crossing patrol, road safety officers, representatives from the local community, district, parish or county and councillors. It is recommended that the Working Group meet once a term to review the progress of the measures and initiatives identified in the School Travel Plan. The School Travel Plan Advisor from Durham County Council will be present at the first meeting of the Working Group to offer support and advice.
It is the role of the Working Group to formulate a package of initiatives and measures for implementation, and consider policies to be included in the School Travel Plan.
These initiatives may include the development of a ‘Walking Bus’ scheme, a ‘Park and Stride’ initiative or a 5 minute Walking Zone. For more information on these initiatives please see school travel planning encouragement and enabling.
Occasionally the physical environment in and around a school may need improving to encourage sustainable travel. If engineering measures are identified by the Working Group, engineers from Durham County Council will investigate possible solutions and produce draft proposals for the School Travel Planning Working Group to consider.
Engineering measures that are considered appropriate and are likely to encourage a change to sustainable forms of travel may be funded from the County Council’s School Travel Planning budget.
Once the School Travel Plan document is completed, it can be submitted to the DfES and DFT for funding. The Plans are submitted once a year in March and, once these are approved, schools are rewarded with a capital grant of £3,750 plus £5.00 per pupil for primary schools and £5,000 plus £5.00 per pupil for secondary schools.
Schools are also encouraged to participate in either or both of the Walk to School campaigns - National Walk to School Week falls in May while International Walk To School Week falls in October. The School Travel Planning team will support schools in organising specific activities to promote these special focus weeks.
We also:
- Organise a wide range of events to support sustainable travel. Events features some of our more recent activities.
- Visit schools who are involved in the development of a School Travel Plan to present assemblies on sustainable travel with Sam, our safer, greener, fitter mascot or meet the team.
Sam’s activities are featured in our school travel planning newsletter which is packed full of information on how schools are promoting active travel and is distributed to all school in the County once a term.
Find a comprehensive list of schools who are engaged in the school travel planning programme.
For more information on resources available visit resources.
For a chance to join the School Travel Planning programme please visit Has Your School Got A School Travel Plan?
