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Review of Research on School Travel

CHAPTER FOUR Effects of Initiatives

General

4.1 Given the breadth and depth of research looking at the factors affecting school travel, and the role of school travel in children's development, it is perhaps surprising that the impacts of initiatives to change travel behaviour appear to have been poorly researched.

4.2 Two reasons for this are likely to be important. Firstly, Halden (1999) highlights that success in one location cannot imply success in others. Success is defined in many different ways and is perceived differently. Local problems require local solutions and provided there is a dynamic and committed community based approach to planning, a managed approach to success will be achieved.

4.3 Where there are robust research findings, the outcomes have usually been viewed narrowly, e.g. the impact of walking buses on the number of people walking rather than the impacts on car travel. More research is therefore needed, looking more comprehensively at the transport, social, education and health impacts of initiatives.

4.4 To develop robust conclusions about individual types of measure, research would need to include large samples, since good practice in school travel planning usually involves the adoption of packages of initiatives. Good practice guidance on the types of initiatives used to encourage improvements in school travel suggests a large number of activities as summarised in Table 2 (DETR 1999, Halden 1999, Mackett 2000).

Table 2 - School Travel Initiatives

4.5 A UK survey sought views on what could be done to improve walking, cycling or public transport so that parents would be confident about their child using each mode (Bradshaw 2000). Relative to counterparts in England, more Scottish residents thought that walking could be a substitute for car travel, but less thought that public transport and cycling improvements would influence their travel decisions. About half of the parents who currently drive their children to school in Scotland said that nothing could be done to other modes to encourage them to change. Amongst the remainder, safe walking and cycling routes were considered to be the highest priorities, with availability of buses being seen as more of a problem than any quality or cost factors.

Public transport initiatives

4.6 Research involving surveys of local authorities, parents and children (ATCO 1999, Atkins 2000, Edwards 1977, DTLR 2001) has identified some of the factors which could make public transport better and which users would perceive as making bus travel better.

Table 3 - School Bus Initiatives

Support for walking and cycling

4.7 The lack of facilities at a school can be an obstacle to walking and cycling to school, but simply providing new facilities will not necessarily encourage more walking and cycling (Halden 2001). The facilities most likely to encourage walking and cycling are safe routes, but secure cycle parking and lockers also can have an impact.

4.8 Practical training of children in safe road behaviour can substantially improve their ability to adopt safe road crossing behaviour (Thomson JA 1996, Tolmie AK 1998).

4.9 Despite many positive reports on walking bus schemes, there have been few systematic evaluations of their impacts. Bickerstaff (2000) showed how children's road sense, social development, independence and awareness of the environment improved with participation in the scheme. Although the research lacked clear outcome measures for some of the findings, it suggested that the schemes reduced the chance of being bullied on the way to school.

4.10 Home zones can improve the safety and environment of the streets where people live and therefore significantly improve perceptions and practice for safe walking and cycling to school. In the UK, home zones research is at an early stage (Layfield 2000) but particularly for travel to primary schools, which involve more local journeys, the indications are that they can be successfully used as part of a comprehensive approach to road safety.

Education and publicity

4.11 Including transport issues within the curriculum helps to encourage more efficient school travel choices. Marketing initiatives targeting local issues and particular groups are more effective than general campaigns (DTLR 2000) and focused child centred publicity is amongst the most effective at influencing behaviour. Publicity about things that are working is one of the most important factors influencing parental attitudes to school travel (Halden 1999).

Infrastructure and enforcement

4.12 Traffic calming schemes do not always improve safety (Webster 2000). They must be properly signed, well designed and use physical features appropriate for the local environment. Community based planning approaches, such as safer routes to school, can help to plan and deliver appropriate measures at priority locations (TRL 2001).

4.13 Views of car drivers (Lex 1998) on their responses to a doubling of travel time on school runs showed that the most likely mode shift would be to walking or cycling, with 28% of respondents viewing this as their likely response, compared with only 4% viewing a switch to public transport as attractive.

Planning efficient school travel

4.14 A survey in England and Wales (DETR 2000) identified that the government's policy for school travel plans was being implemented in about 2% of schools. An earlier survey in Scotland (Halden 1999) identified that 3% of schools had started a safer routes to school process but most of these had not reached the stage of a detailed school travel plan.

4.15 Since community based planning of travel is needed to achieve the necessary integration of social, health, education and transport factors, various studies have looked at the factors affecting the take up of travel plans:

• Distance based criteria for determining eligibility for free or subsidised school travel are incompatible with more integrated approaches to school travel planning (Armitage 1998). Broad based planning approaches require community involvement and many factors to be balanced, and within this context distance criteria become more of a problem rather than a help.
• Community ways of working and managing projects need to be recognised. Accountable public administration cannot match the flexibility of community working but joint approaches can work well. Terminology such as "Safer Routes to School", "School Travel Teams" and "Champions" to describe the school travel planning, committees and managers respectively emphasise that leadership can come from any sector of society (Halden 1999, BAH 1998).
• Competitions with financial incentives have been shown to be one of the most effective ways to increase interest in travel plans (Bradshaw 2001). Competitions can be successfully administered by local authorities (Osborne 1998), national government or voluntary groups (Halden 1999).

4.16 It needs to be recognised that some communities will need more support than others and community acceptance as opposed to community involvement can still deliver positive results in some places. Funders need to set an affordable guideline financial allocation, sufficient to support community interest, but ensuring that aspirations are realistic and manageable (Bradshaw 2001).

4.17 As safer routes to school and school travel plans become more widespread, research on the outcomes of different approaches would be very valuable.

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