Safe Routes to School
A Green Party local authority
transport action plan for the 2004 local elections
May 2004
John Edwards
Contact Spencer Fitz-Gibbon, Green Party
press office 0207 561 0282
Contents:
1. Introduction P1.
2. The School transport Bill p.2
3. Case Studies P.3
4. References P.4
1. Introduction
1.1 Faced with the relentless rise in road traffic
volumes, the need for safe routes for school children has become very urgent.
Such routes have been shown to reduce traffic, ease parental fears, and reduce
the number of children killed and injured on their way to school.
1.2
Pilot studies show that these schemes can cut the number of school run cars by
half. Currently, 18% of all car journeys in the morning peak period are due to
children being driven to school.
1.3
Using London as the basis of calculation of the cost of providing safe routes
for schools, a figure of £56,000 per school is revealed. This figure
demonstrates starkly just how inadequate are the government’s recently
announced grants of £5,000 per primary school and £10,000 per secondary school
in the provision of safe routes, especially as these grants have to be spent
within the perimeter of the school site. Such on site expenditure conflicts
starkly with what is proven to be the actual most urgent need in providing safe
routes to school, and this indisputably is traffic calming. Speed cushions and
humps, new pedestrian crossings, 20 mph zones, and high visibility signs to
drivers are all required in order to make the schemes effective.
1.4
In Hull, an enlightened policy of calming traffic to 20 mph was launched in
1995. Today, more than one hundred zones with a speed limit of 20 mph cover
over 25% of the city, and the impact on road safety has been seriously
impressive. Within these zones since 1995, 300 accidents have been eliminated,
60% of all injuries have been eliminated, and injuries to children are down by
no less than 75%.
1.5
Leicester has also proved the crucial need to calm traffic to 20 mph as the
first and essential feature of any safe routes scheme, and the city
demonstrates its own impressive reduction in child casualties in its 20 mph
zones. Moreover, Leicester has shown that such traffic calming improves child
physical fitness, reduces vehicle emissions, reduces volumes of traffic, and
crucially, allays parental fears of their children walking or cycling to
school.
2.1
The government has recently published the draft of its School Transport Bill
which could have marked a transition towards addressing the many problems seen
to surround the issue of how children travel to school. The problems include:
congestion, pollution, lack of safety, health issues, ageing fleets of buses to
name but a few, and yet the "Secondary Heads Association" response to
the Government’s draft bill states:
‘Whilst many of these issues are raised in
the Government’s strategy for home to school transport, it is disappointing
that the current bill addresses only a very limited range of them, essentially
only in the area of the school bus.’
2.2
The report on the draft bill by the House of Commons Select Committee on
Transport concludes its discussion of the inadequacies of the provisions in the
following terms:
‘It is clear that something is wrong with
school transport; the legislative framework is outdated; the services provided
can be sub-standard; parents are increasingly choosing to increase congestion
by driving their children to school rather that choosing healthier modes of
transport. It is sensible to approach this problem by allowing LEAs to try a
range of approaches, instead of legislating on the basis of hope rather than
experience. To this extent we support the draft School Transport Bill. However,
the Government approach is seriously flawed. It does not treat the problem
urgently enough. It fails to consider school transport as part of wider
transport system. It proposes to give future Secretaries of State power to
determine the school transport system without any further legislative
authority. This cannot be right.’
2.3
The committee picks out particular failings, especially the lack of a legal definition of the term ‘safe route.’
This omission is of key importance.
2.4
In Denmark, which once had the EU’s worst child road casualty figures, such a
definition was made the lynch pin in framing legislation to provide safe
transport to schools. Danish law was enacted so as to introduce for every child
a safe route, and the bill gave a firm definition of ‘safe route.’ Local
authorities were tasked by the new law to provide EITHER safe routes OR free
school transport. Unwilling to meet the cost of free transport, the safe routes
were provided instead.
2.5
This is the type of uncompromising action required in the UK. ‘The Government’s
leisurely approach is an indulgence,’ says the Select Committee.
2.6
The Government has begun a drive towards all schools developing their own
School Travel Plans and these will include not only safe routes but such
aspects of child safety as cycle training, pedestrian training, car sharing
schemes and walking buses, but full implementation across the country is not
expected until at least 2010, and pilot schemes associated with the School
Transport Bill are not required to be complete until 2011. What schools really
need is needed now, and it is what Hull and Leicester have proved to be the
crucial initial step, and which they cannot implement themselves. They need 20
mph zones.
2.7
In the face of the evidence that 20 mph zones around schools can produce such
marvellous reductions in child involvement in road accidents, safe routes to
school, together with rapid implementation of their essential traffic calming
measures should be given much more urgency by the Government. Six or seven
years is too long to wait.
North Tyneside
1.4 According to the School Travel Plans Co-ordinator,
cutting speed has been central to achieving the reduction. ‘It’s quite simple.
If you reduce speed, you reduce the casualties.’
1.5 North Tyneside Borough has six large 20 mph zones
and has implemented 17 school travel plans with more under development each
year. Each plan works with pupils,
staff, and borough engineers to target traffic management measures in the local
area.
North Sherborne, Dorset
2.1 In 1997 the residents of north Sherborne, Dorset,
petitioned their county council over a cluster of nine accidents in which
children were injured whilst travelling to or from school. The schools
concerned were Sherborne County Primary and The Gryphon Secondary School.
2.2 In 1999-2000 the government announced casualty-led
funding for road safety schemes of which the two Dorset schools were
beneficiaries. In response to residents’ wishes, the county council
(a)
imposed
a 20 mph speed limit
(b)
took
measures to reduce the volume of traffic near the schools
(c)
widened
pavements
(d)
improved
street lighting.
2.3 By coincidence, from a different budget, and at
about the same time, a new footway from the estate where many of the schools’
families lived was built to the school sites.
2.4 The success of the combined schemes is demonstrated
by the statistics. In the 4 years before the schemes were implemented there
were nine child injury accidents. Since implementation, there have been none.
There has been an increase in the number of children walking to school, a
reduction in the use of cars, and traffic speed has slowed significantly.
Before the scheme’s implementation, the average speed in the vicinity of the
schools was 30.2 mph. Since implementation it has fallen to 21.5 mph.
York
2.5 In York, where there has been extensive investment
in cycle routes, there has been a large increase in numbers of children
pedalling to school. This has been accompanied by a decrease in casualty
figures. 12% now cycle to school compared with 2% nationally.
References:
1.Green
Party media release ‘Greens call for safe route to school for every London
child’ 03/09/01
2.Hull
accident statistics, www.hullcc.org.uk
3.Michael
Jeeves at Leicester City Council, telephone conversation.
4.Sustrans
web site, http://www.saferoutestoschools.org.uk
5.Robert
Smith, Team Leader, (Road Safety), Dorset County Council, telephone conversation.
6.Secondary
Heads Association response to draft School Transport Bill.
7.House
of Commons Transport Select Committee report on draft School Transport Bill.