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SCOTTISH SCHOOL TRAVEL ADVISORY GROUP REPORT
SECTION A Establishment of the Scottish School Travel Advisory Group
1. The establishment of the Scottish School Travel Advisory Group was announced by Sarah Boyack, the then Minister for Transport and Planning, in July 2000.
2. The Group's Objective is to increase the proportion of non-car travel to school by;
- identifying practical means of increasing choices and influencing behaviour and so developing a coherent approach to school travel.
- reporting its recommendations to Scottish Ministers.
- leading the dissemination of best practice and raising the profile of school travel issues.
3. The Group held its first meeting in September 2000. Its membership is representative of a wide area of expertise in health, education and transport. A list of the individual members is attached at Annex A.
Background to the work of the Scottish School Travel Advisory Group
4. The UK Government's White Paper A new deal for Transport: better for everyone, published in 1998 specifically noted that reductions in the use of the car to take children to school would have marked benefits in reducing peak time congestion.
5. The UK Government established the School Travel Advisory Group in December 1998 with the purpose of achieving this reduction. Officials of the then Scottish Office sat on this Group and following devolution the Scottish Executive continued to be represented on this UK Group which produced its report and recommendations in January 2000.
6. As Scotland has its own unique set of circumstances it was decided that a specifically Scottish Group be set up. One of its first tasks was to look at this report and tailor its recommendations to meet the needs of the Scottish people.
7. The Scottish School Travel Advisory Group has met five times and now presents its report.
8. In December 1999 the Scottish Executive published its Guidance Document "How to Run a Safer Routes to School (SRTS) Scheme" which was issued to all schools and local authorities in Scotland. The work of SSTAG, while it takes a rather wider perspective, should be seen as building on the excellent foundations that has resulted from this initiative which remains a key focus for school travel in Scotland.
9. The benefits of more active travel to school outlined in the SRTS Guidance are what SSTAG sets out to achieve - namely improved safety; improved health, both present and future, through decreases in local pollution and increases in levels of exercise; an improved environment through a reduction in congestion, pollution and traffic noise; and improvements in children's social development through increased opportunities for independent travel.
The Role of Targets and Partnership Working
10. One of the first matters the Group considered was whether it would be appropriate to set national targets for modal shift on the school run. Figures attached at Annex B show trends in school travel modes over the last 15 years and make clear that an ever increasing number of children are being driven to school.
11. However, the Group felt it was not particularly desirable to aim to go back to the status quo of past decades. It would seem more sensible to take current figures as the starting point, analyse the most appropriate targets for change in the current situation and aim to improve on this to create a better future. A large number of factors are very different now to what they were say 10 years ago which make comparisons with a past period not particularly useful. However, almost everyone would be agreed on the need for forward-looking improvement on the current situation which is that approximately 18% of children in Scotland are driven to school by car and over half of these live within a short distance of school (1km in the case of primary and 2kms in the case of secondary children) or have public transport available.
12. The Group agreed it was realistic to aim to encourage modal shift in this Group, as they represent those who might find it easiest to change mode.
13. However, the Group agreed setting a national target for this reduction was not appropriate for two reasons.
14. Firstly Scotland has a diverse geography and set of social circumstances across and within its local authorities. Bussing large numbers of children safely, efficiently and comfortably over long distances in the Highlands or the Scottish Borders presents a different set of challenges from giving children in city centre or semi-urban areas the opportunity to walk or cycle safely the short distance from their home. The potential for change, the pace of that change and the measures appropriate to realising it will be very different in these different areas.
15. Further, creating the circumstances that will encourage a modal shift on the school journey depends on local action in identifying and removing local barriers to walking, cycling and bus use and a large number of bodies and individuals will have to work together to achieve the desired changes.
16. Provision of infrastructure that facilitates an increase in walking, cycling or the use of public transport to school rests with local authorities. Traffic management is also a matter for local authorities in consultation with the police, who are in turn responsible for traffic law enforcement. Creation of individual school travel plans and developing individual safer routes to school schemes involves teachers, parents, pupils, transport operators and the police among others.
17. These examples serve to show that where national government can set the policy direction a large number of people must work together on a local level to put this into action and it would seem logical that local authorities co-ordinate this local action.
18. Local authorities are already asked in their local transport strategies to set targets for modal shift on the school run. They are best placed to see the situation in their areas in the round and to dovetail school travel with their other transport, health and social policies. Local authorities are in the best position to decide what is a realistic target for change on the school run in their areas. Those local authorities who have not already done so should as soon as possible set their own targets, through their local transport strategies, to increase the modal shift on the journey to school in their own areas.
19. It is appreciated that the degree of local monitoring of school travel patterns may be limited at present and it is essential that adequate monitoring of school travel trends be put in place by local authorities.
20. Indeed targets may vary not only from authority to authority but from school to school. The Scottish Executive Guidance on "How to Run a Safer Routes to Schools Scheme" asked schools to develop their own safer routes to school. It asked them to look at the travel habits of their pupils and identify the barriers to walking and cycling and find safe ways of removing these. Through this process many individual schools will now have clear ideas of what proportion of children can safely be expected to choose more active and environmentally friendly travel modes.
21. The Group therefore concluded that the most suitable way forward is for local authorities (and schools themselves if they so wish) to set their own targets to achieve the national objective of a greater proportion of school journeys being made by active and sustainable modes i.e. by foot, bicycle or public transport.
22. The role for the Scottish Executive should be to monitor the national progress through the Scottish Household survey and to continue to publish year on year statistics on travel modes on the school journey. The baseline against which to monitor progress should be the figures shown in the Scottish Household Survey for 1999.
Resources
23 . In presenting this report the Group wishes to highlight the fact that it will require a very large investment to provide the necessary infrastructure, facilities and staff costs to fully implement its recommendations. It acknowledges that the Scottish Executive has, between 2000 and 2004, committed over 20 million to cycling, walking and safer streets projects. However, higher levels of investment both at national and local government level will be necessary to achieve the aims of the Group.
24 .In particular an increased resource will be necessary to carry forward recommendations 6 and 7 of this report. As acknowledged above, the Scottish Executive has put a sizeable resource into implementing safer routes to schools schemes. However, the Group feels this focus now needs to be widened out. The work of the school safety teams described in the Guidance on How to Run a Safer Route to School Scheme needs to be furthered developed by the appointment of school travel co-ordinators at local authority level who will be responsible for, among other things, ensuring that each school has a school travel plan. The creation and implementation of a school travel plan is a more widely focused activity than the development of a safer routes to school scheme as described in the Scottish Executive Guidance of that name. These schemes still have an important part to play in school travel but the Group feels, while prioritising safety was a logical first step, the time has come to widen the emphasis to include other aspects such as the effects of choice of transport mode on health and the environment. This wider focus can only succeed if sufficient funds are allocated to developing it. The Group would like to see the Scottish Executive help develop this wider focus by providing funding for school travel plan co-ordinators through a scheme similar to the one set up by the DTLR to fund travel plan co-ordinators.
25. The Group wishes also to highlight the need for recurring revenue funding in order to ensure that progress on school travel issues is sustainable.
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