Over the last 30 years, the proportion of children walking and cycling to school has plummeted. Increasing numbers of children are now being driven to and from school. As we become more aware of the importance of regular exercise, built-in to everyday living, this level of car use has began to be questioned by public health professionals and transport planners. It is estimated that some 20% of morning peak hour traffic congestion is made up of parents driving their children to school. For these reasons, a concerted effort is underway to encourage children to ride to school.
24th Apr 2013
SEGMENT is an Intelligent-Energy-Europe-funded project which tested consumer market segmentation techniques to persuade people to adopt more energy efficient forms of transport, such as walking, cycling, public transport and car sharing. The results show the potential and the limitations of segmentation, the difficulties in evaluation and the large learning potential within EU-projects.
25th Feb 2013
The paper, published in the journal Transport Policy in Febraury 2013, presents an analysis of school travel behaviour in the Netherlands and Flanders, two European countries with high bicycle use. The study analyses two aspects of school travel behaviour: home-to-school distances and modal choice. Both are analysed for primary and secondary school students.
08th Jan 2013
In December 2012 the American President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition released an interim report on the nation’s physical activity guidelines. The report identifies interventions that can help increase physical activity in youth across a variety of settings. The report recognises that changes involving the built environment are promising and merit implementation even as the evidence continues to evolve.
23rd Oct 2012
This research, published in the Journal of Transport Geography in 2012 explores the prevalence, reasons and socio-demographics of parents who drive their children to/from school and to other local destinations. The authors found that despite the health benefits of active transport parental chauffeuring was pervasive. Parental employment patterns, concern about traffic injury and lack of social trust were related to parental chauffeuring.
23rd Oct 2012
This research, published in the journal Transport Policy in November 2012, reviewed quantitative and qualitative research and identified eight common factors that influenced the choice of active travel to school: distance to school, parental fear of traffic and crime, family schedule constraints and values, neighborhood and family resources and culture, weather, and school characteristics.
26th Sep 2012
In June 2012 the Safe Routes to School National Partnership released a report that explores the potential health impacts on children from exposure to traffic pollution. It also examined how Safe Routes to School programs may potentially impact children’s exposure to traffic pollution, and strategies and approaches that may mitigate exposure to traffic pollution.
20th Sep 2012
In 2012 Canberra University installed three bicycle shelters on campus. Each shelter has a bicycle repair station and will securely hold up to 17 bikes on racks.
20th Sep 2012
In 2009 the Ministry of Transport and Fietsberaad published this overview of bicycle use and bicycle policy in the Netherlands. It was produced in English and translated into French, German and Spanish. It includes case studies relating to cycling to work, school and the shops, spatial planning, end of trip facilities and infrastructure treatments.
30th Aug 2012
In July 2012 the Danish Cancer Society produced a guide focusing on infrastructure and strategic inteventions to make cycling the healthiest, safest and easiest mode of transport to and from school.The guide provides examples of ideas for structural measures that promote active transport to and from school. Safe school roads is a critical prerequisite for enabling more children to travel alone to and from school.
31st Jul 2012
The Charter of Vancouver was launched during the Velo-city Global 2012 conference as a step towards reaching the goal of a sustainable future, by focusing on cycling and children. The right of children to cycle should be universal and ever present; because children who make jumping on a bike a regular part of their lives today can grow up to be healthy, happy and environmentally conscious adults.
05th Jun 2012
In May 2012 outback South Australia hosted a three-day Aboriginal cycling tour, called 'COBRA' - the Coober Pedy To Oodnadatta Bike Ride Adventure. Twenty men and boys rode 200 kilometres of rocky tracks. The ride was the brainchild of a pair of police officers hoping to bring kids 'back to the basics'. It was also a fundraiser for diabetes sufferers.
12th Apr 2012
In March 2012 the UK Department of Transport published a report looking at the number of children cycling to school since the introduction of the Bikeability scheme five years ago. In March the scheme celebrated five years of delivering training for children in schools. The report shows that where there is a longer history of delivering cycle training, a higher proportion of children are cycling to secondary school. Further, those authorities that have received higher levels of Bikeability funding have seen larger increases in cycling to secondary school.
12th Apr 2012
The EU funded CONNECT project which focused on Sustainable Mobility Campaigns for Young People ran between October 2007 - September 2010. Two separate campaigns were designed, one aimed at primary schools (Traffic Snake Game) and the other targeted at secondary schools (ECO-TRIP). Both campaigns aimed to encourage children and young people to travel to school using sustainable methods of travel.
26th Mar 2012
In March 2012 the National Heart Foundation in collaboration with the Cycling Promotion Fund published the results of an online survey with a random sample of 1,005 Australian parents with school aged children in relation to children and riding bikes to and from school. The survey found that only one in ten children ride to school, even though 80% of parents think it would improve their kids’ health.
09th Mar 2012
The Big Pedal is an inter-school cycling competition spanning 15 school days in March (5-23 March 2012). The competition is coordinated by Sustrans and in 2012 more than 1000 schools participated. It works a bit like the Tour de France in that each day of the race is a new stage following a different Sustrans cycle route around the UK. Schools encourage pupils, parents and staff to cycle and scoot to school each day and the more that do, the faster their time will be for each stage of the race.
29th Nov 2011
The NSW Government released the results of the NSW Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey in November 2011. More than 8000 school students from over 100 schools were measured for height, weight, eating habits, physical activity, fundamental movement skills and cardio-respiratory fitness in early 2010. The survey found that 52 per cent of boys achieve recommended levels of activity, compared with 41 per cent of girls. The highest prevalence of active travel was among Year 6 students.
07th Sep 2011
This booklet of cycling games for children was published by the Cycling Embassy of Denmark in July 2010. Nursery school children and school children can have great fun cycling. These fun games teach children coordination and confidence.
24th Aug 2011
This report, released by the US Safe Routes to School in 2011, provides a compendium of projects and practices in the Safe Routes to School Program. The Program was established in 2005 to encourage more children to walk and cycle to school and includes both infrastructure and non-infrastructure components.
24th Jan 2011
More than 200 participants from 14 states and two countries came to New York to swap ideas, learn bicycle advocacy best practices and build nationwide momentum in the country’s first-ever Youth Bike Summit held in Jan 2011 in New York City. This video, by StreetFilms, provides an overview of the Summit.
27th Sep 2010
This report by Jan Garrard was published for VicHealth in December 2009. It provides an overview of physical activity trends in children and the role of active transport in the health of young people. Changes in Australian lifestyles, urban environments and transportation systems have led to changed physical activity patterns among children. Active transport, in particular, has declined dramatically in countries, including Australia, where car travel has become the predominant form of personal mobility.
24th Sep 2010
This video, published in 2007, shows how Japanese women transport children on bicycles known as Mamachari Bicycles. The bikes usually include one or more child seats as well as room for carrying large bags. Some mamachari are battery-assisted to help climb tough hills when carrying a full load of kids and groceries.
24th Sep 2010
This research paper was published in 2007. The study collected opinions about cycling to school from Year 8, 9 and 10 students in North Shore City. Students answered an online questionnaire which asked them about bike ownership and use, modes of travel to school, safety issues, facility issues and peer issues. A total of 2355 students, approximately 28% of the target population in North Shore City, responded to the survey.
24th Sep 2010
This research report was published by Land Transport NZ in 2007. It evaluated a trial of school based cycle trains in New Zealand.
24th Sep 2010
Ride2School program is a behavioural change program which aims to increase the number of students walking and riding to school. The program, administered by Bicycle Network, provides a 15-step guide for establishing a Ride2School program for schools. Selected schools can also receive expert assistance to encourage more children to cycle to school.
24th Sep 2010
The Get Up & Grow: Healthy Eating and Physical Activity for Early Childhood resources promote healthy eating and physical activity in young children. The resources, produced in 2009 by the Australian Department of Health and Aging include a director/coordinator book, a staff and carer book, a cooking for children book, a family book, six posters, fourteen brochures and four stickers.
24th Sep 2010
VicHealth developed the Streets Ahead program in 2008 to build on the successes of the Walking School Bus (WSB) program. The program encourages kids to use their own legs and wheels for short local trips – and travel by car less – by encouraging them to walk, cycle, skate or run to school and other local destinations.
24th Sep 2010
This report, published in 2007 by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, aims provide guidance tp councils seeking ways to support active transport as a means of promoting positive environmental and health outcomes in their communities.
24th Sep 2010
The objective of this research was to identify the barriers to students cycling to school for six intermediate schools and recommend specific interventions for the schools, along with more general, national level recommendations. The research report was published in August 2009 by the NZ Transport Agency.
17th Sep 2010
Cycling into a Sustainable Future was conceived to target the barriers that prevent children from cycling at and to school. This kit has been written in order to share some of the learning from the Cycling into a Sustainable Future project delivered by Environment Victoria during 2005.
16th Sep 2010
This page, from the Transport Demand Management encyclopaedia created by the Transport Policy Institute in the Canadian city of Victoria, British Colombia, encourages parents, students and staff to reduce automobile trips and use alternative modes when travelling to and from schools.
| Website funded by the Department of Transport and Infrastructure and supported by Austroads |
 |
