About Safe Routes to School

• Investigations
• Safe and Active Travel
• School Travel Data
• Did You Know
• Getting Involved

About Safe Routes to School

SRTS in Christchurch has two key aims:

• To improve the safety of the school journey for school age road users.
• To encourage safe and active travel to school.

SRTS seeks to achieve these aims through:

• Investigating road safety issues in school communities.
• Developing strategies to encourage safe and active travel to school.

We hope you will find plenty of useful information on both improving and developing safe and healthy ways of getting to school that you can use in your school community or classroom. SRTS is committed to working as pro-actively as possible with school communities to achieve these outcomes.

The 'Safe Routes To School' (SRTS) programme commenced at the Christchurch City Council (CCC) in late 1996. It is fully funded by the Council as a programme in its own right. Originating with school road safety investigations, SRTS has developed to include a strong behavioural and promotional emphasis of encouraging safe and active travel to school. These include Walk to School Days, the Walking School Bus Project, and Resources to help schools.

Child cycling and pedestrian objectives for the Council's Transport and City Streets Unit, and making Christchurch a more child friendly place in terms of the Children's Strategy, are the two Council policy planks SRTS rests on. SRTS was also established to address the decline in the numbers of children walking or cycling to school, associated with the increasing numbers of children taken to school by motor vehicles. The programme fits in well with the Council's aim of making our roading environment more people friendly.

Travel Planning

A key aim of SRTS is to make the journey to and from school safer. One way is to involve the school community, including the Board of Trustees, and associated engineering and police road safety professionals in a consultation process of issue identification and problem solving. An important part of the process is surveying children on their travel modes, routes and hazards.

Outcomes include engineering treatments, educational and promotional campaigns in schools, and traffic enforcement around schools. The School Travel Plan identifies and addresses barriers to active modes of travel to school. It includes an action plan with achievable time frames.

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Following concerns about the decline in the numbers of children walking and cycling to school, the build up of traffic around schools, and the exercise levels of children, a 'Walk a Child to School Day' [Internal page link] events were staged in 1999 and 2000. The aim of the events was to promote walking as a safe and healthy way of getting to school.

The WCSDs also had the wider aim of raising awareness about health and safety issues of the school journey. The event has been followed up with a 'Safe & Active Routes To School' newsletter sent to all schools to highlight specific strategies to promote active modes of travel. These include the Walking School Bus as an ongoing measure to address school journey issues. Other measures are mentioned in the 'Latest News' page.

The key idea is to create a 'safe and active' culture approach to the issue of the school journey. Promoting safe and active travel to the wider school community also allows more schools to become actively involved in child health issues surrounding the school journey. Encouraging travel modes such as walking also allows for some of the best road safety education – by learning about the road environment first hand.

Parent and Child Travel Comparisons It’s always interesting and informative to see how things change over time. The types of travel modes taken to school have changed markedly in the space of one generation. SRTS data from two schools shows that: As children, 77% of parents either walked or cycled to school, compared with 30% of their children who do so now. The modal shift has been from walking as the dominant mode of transport to school for parents (65%) to that of the car being so for children (66%). There has been a 4.5 fold increase in the numbers of children travelling to school by car compared to the numbers of parents who travelled to school by car as children.
How Children Travel To School Here are some comprehensive figures on how children normally get to school. Travel data was collected from over thirty primary schools in Christchurch, out of a total of 120, just prior to the 1999 Walk a Child to School Day. Travel by car to school (53.5%) was the dominant transport mode for children. 34% of children walk to school, and 9.5% cycle.
Children’s Preferred Travel Modes How would children prefer to get to school? What has been the impact of the car journey? Travel modes taken to school by children from five schools were compared with their preferred means of transport to school. Whereas 51% of children came to school by car, only 29% would choose to do so. While two thirds of children prefer active modes of travel (66%), less than half travel to school in this way (47%). Cycling to school is the most preferred means of getting to school.
Why Children Travel To School By Car The reasons behind child travel to school by motor vehicle are varied, with structural, environmental and behavioural factors often combining. The main reason or reasons given for child travel to school by car for four schools are shown below. Road safety (34%) and distance (32%) were the leading reasons given. For 68% of children travelling by motor vehicle, the trip is less than two kilometres.
What Would Encourage Active Travel to School Car driving parents have been asked if they support measures to increase active travel to school, and what factors would encourage them to have their children walk or cycle to school. Most car driving parents (68%) would support measures to promote active forms of transport to school.  A safer roading environment and children walking in a supervised group would result in more parents letting their children walk to school (59% of total responses).

Pedestrian Crash Study
A Land Transport Safety Authority study into pedestrian crash factors was released last year. When it came to child pedestrians, the study noted the following patterns about their crash (or ‘accident’) involvement:

	They mostly occurred within 1km of home, and were concentrated during the mid to late afternoon.
	Children were more likely to be hit when one or more of the following occurred: Crossing from the right of the oncoming vehicle, running out, not looking or not being supervised.

While not condoning excessive speed, poor driver behaviour or unsafe road environments, the study clearly notes some areas that school communities can deal with. Supervision on the school journey means safer travel, and with no need to seek refuge in vehicles.

Hillary Commission Survey

With their ‘Push Play’ campaign, SPARC have released information from a sport and physical activity survey. It noted New Zealanders’ participation levels in sport and leisure. Among the wealth of information generated were details on child activity levels. 

Alarmingly, the Hillary Commission found that 30% of 5-12 year olds – or primary school children – were considered to be inactive. The school journey fits in by being an ideal opportunity to encourage healthy lifestyle habits in children, and of course gives them their ‘30 minutes a day’ exercise.

Need some help dealing with safety issues on the school journey? Want to do something positive in the school community? Any school in Christchurch is able to take part in Safe Routes To School initiatives, whether their needs are to improve road safety or to encourage – and celebrate – walking and cycling to school.

Have a look around the rest of this site and get in touch with us: The Schools Coordinator

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