Walk to School week is an annual celebration of the walk to school in May.
The week encourages pupils to take more active and healthier journeys to school.
We take this opportunity to look at some of the best practice around to ensure that these journeys are not only active and healthier but safer and have long term benefit not only to the pupils but also the community and beyond.
Here we ask Gemma Hearsum, Safe and Active Travel Officer, Waltham Forest Council the key questions that you need answered.
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School Streets are an initiative to improve air quality, make it easier and safer for residents to walk and cycle to school, and create a safer more pleasant environment. Restricting traffic movements around the school leads to improvements in road safety, reductions in antisocial behaviour from inconsiderate parking and dangerous manoeuvres, improved air quality due to reduced vehicle engine idling, and subsequently, more active and healthier lifestyles for the school community, residents and local businesses. Waltham Forest Council has introduced 15 Schools Streets so far with 64 roads included in School Street zones and over 12,000 pupils benefiting!
Waltham Forest has introduced numerous walking and cycling improvements across the borough through the Enjoy Waltham Forest (Mini Holland) programme, Liveable Neighbourhoods, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and an extensive behaviour change programme. However, the roads around schools continued to be plagued with a surge of private vehicles around school drop off and collection times increasing the risks of collisions with vulnerable road users and other motorists alongside dangerous unlawful parking, congestion and poor air quality. We wanted to continue to encourage our youngest residents to travel safely, sustainably and actively to school so the logical step was to introduce School Streets to enable this.
Our School Streets have improved air quality, made it easier and safer for residents to walk and cycle to school, and created a safer more pleasant environment. Restricting traffic movements around the school has led to an improvement in road safety, a reduction in anti-social behaviour from inconsiderate parking and dangerous manoeuvres, improved air quality due to reduced vehicle engine idling, and subsequently, more active and healthier lifestyles for pupils, parents, staff, residents and employees of local businesses. Waltham Forest Council has introduced 15 Schools Streets so far with 64 roads included in School Street zones across Waltham Forest and over 12,000 pupils benefiting!
Following our launch of our first School Street Marsh Lane which incorporated two schools in September 2019 we have seen a 20% increase in pupils travelling actively at Willow Brook Primary School and a 10% at St Joseph’s Catholic Infant School. There was also an approximate 80% decrease in the number of vehicles travelling on Marsh Lane during the operational hours of the School Street and a significant decrease in NO2 concentrations recorded.
It has been fantastic to see school communities reclaim space outside their school so they can walk, cycle and scoot and more families than ever before are leaving their cars behind and travelling sustainably and actively to school. These families now have happier and healthier children as are incorporating exercise into their daily lives and the safer routes mean children have the opportunity to travel independently to school in a calmer pleasant environment.
School Streets are being delivered nationally however many outside of Waltham Forest are introduced with no ANPR camera enforcement and rely on volunteers or school staff to place temporary infrastructure (cones or boulders) to stop vehicles entering; we have committed to only introducing schemes which are camera enforced. Although more costly and initially more resource intensive we wanted to ensure maximum impact and travel behaviour change is achieved, increase longevity and security of the schemes and be able to monitor mode change accurately in the scheme areas so all our School Streets are ANPR enforced.
We have also taken an innovative approach to capturing and managing pre and post-implementation feedback to the scheme, as far as possible. The CommonPlace platform includes extensive information on the schemes, including maps and plans, and allows feedback from the local community in an interactive map-based format. The CommonPlace platform includes a number of closed questions around the overall impact of the scheme on different users, and a facility for residents to drop a pin on specific roads or locations and leave comments - positive or negative. This approach allows the feedback process to be managed more effectively and transparently, as well as satisfying statutory requirements associated with Experimental and Temporary Traffic Orders.
Waltham Forest School Streets are managed by a key team of two however we work closely with other Council departments such as Parking, Traffic and Air Quality to ensure their benefit is as a far reaching and inclusive as possible. We work closely with stakeholders, including decision-makers, parents, pupils and residents, to ensure the aim of the scheme is understood and to gain local support. Due to the high interest from our local schools to introduce a School Street we have prioritised schools who are engaged with their Transport for London STARS travel plan, those we perceive to have the highest road safety risks and those who we feel would benefit most. Although designed, introduced, managed, funded and monitored by the Council the Schools play a crucial role in requesting the scheme, designing the scheme and promoting the scheme.
Once a scheme launches, we have on-street presence for the first week to engage with parents/carers and the local community to promote alternative active and sustainable travel options, answer any questions and collate feedback. A complementary behaviour change programme is offered which includes cycle training, Dr Bikes, personalised walking maps, assemblies, pedestrian training and road safety training.
Our Active and Sustainable travel strategy is to increase the number of our residents and visitors to the area travelling actively and sustainably. School Streets allow us to start the conversation with our youngest residents and embed the walking and cycling culture into their daily lives.
Despite the progress made by the Council in recent years to rebalance our streets and enable more active travel, the public health emergency resulting from Covid-19 has dramatically increased awareness on how we view and use our streets and public spaces, resulting in the introduction of School Streets being one of the Council’s priorities to address the Climate Emergency.
Communication is key to an effective School Streets project and we use any opportunity to share the benefits and success of our schemes. Often residents and the schools are frustrated with the high volume of cars outside of their school, blocking their drives and using their parking bays, causing congestion and frustration every morning and afternoon however are unsure how to resolve and improve this.
Through communication with schools, residents, and key stakeholders we can design unique and flexible schemes which tackle these concerns. It is important to us to ensure our schemes are inclusive and meet the needs of everybody using the space so conversation allows us to implement tailored and successful schemes.
We have found once a school community has experienced the calm, traffic-free environment of a School Street, there is widespread support for permanent implementation and other schools begin to request the implementation of a School Street. We want walking, cycling and scooting to be the easiest, quickest and first option for those travelling to school so we would continue to not only implement the traffic restrictions but also offer a wider complementary behaviour change programme. We are exploring how School Streets could host street parties to create cohesion between the local residents and school community, we are looking at innovative ways to encourage pupils to be able to scoot to school including tailored scooter training and how schools and local communities can take ownership of the School Street with planting schemes.
We have found once a school community has experienced the calm, traffic-free environment of a School Street, there is widespread support for permanent implementation. Waltham Forest’s strong political leadership supports continuing to tackle the ongoing climate emergency and sees School Streets as a key part of this so as funding becomes available, we will continue to introduce School Streets. With our flexible approach we hope to see School Streets expanding over larger zones, schools driving the schemes forward and the local community engaging and suggesting future locations. We want School Streets to be recognised as a benefit to our schools and become part of the reason parents choose to send their children to school in Waltham Forest. School Streets also offer the potential to teach children from a young age to travel independently in a safe and sustainable way.
Society is faced with a climate emergency, an obesity crisis and a transport network under huge pressure from private vehicle use - leaders need to focus on the importance of embedding walking and cycling into people’s daily lives which would begin to tackle these issues and I think this should start with our youngest members of society to create life-long change.
Gemma Hearsum, Safe and Active Travel Officer, London Borough of Waltham Forest
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The opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the CIHT or its members. Neither the CIHT nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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