Cornwall County Council School Travel Strategy

Cornwall County Council School Travel Strategy

• 1 Foreword

• 1 Scope of this Strategy
• 2 Introduction
• 3 Specific Objectives of this Strategy
• 4 Background
• 5 The Future of School Travel Plans in Cornwall
• 6 Implementing a Successful Strategy
• 7 Examples of Good Practice
• 8 Targets

• 1 Appendices

7 Examples of Good Practice

A number of Cornish schools involved with firstly, the Safer Routes to School scheme, and more latterly the School Travel Plan scheme, have bought clarity to how successful various initiatives can be in different settings. Some have had major works on or around their site, others have introduced events and activities to encourage young people and their parents to think about travelling and make informed choices about their modes of travel. Large community schools, tiny rural schools and schools in towns and villages all over Cornwall have addressed local needs in imaginative and effective ways. The following offer some examples of what can be achieved.

Indian Queens Community Primary School and Nursery

Success: a 13% increase in pupils walking to school (in the period 2004 – 2005)

Indian Queens School took part in the Safer Routes to School project followed more recently by developing and implementing their School Travel Plan. As a result of this work, measures to improve the school site have been undertaken to encourage more sustainable travel – joint funded by CCC’s Children, Young People, and Families Department, Safer Routes to School fund and the school’s capital grant. These improvements include a new pedestrian entrance, four wet weather waiting areas (one of which is situated in the playground and doubles as an outdoor classroom), and cycle storage facilities.

In addition to these alterations on site, the school have also implemented a number of pupil-centred initiatives including taking part in Cornwall’s Festival of Cycling and implementing Walk on Wednesdays’ (WOWs).  This has been helped by two local facilities with large car parks agreeing to let parents park vehicles at the beginning and end of the day and allowed a ‘Park and Stride’ scheme to be created.

St Ives Infants School

Success: a 13% increase in pupil’s walking to school (in the period 2005 – 2006)

St Ives Infants School shares its site with St. Ives Junior school and were the first schools in Cornwall to formulate a School Travel Plan covering the whole campus.The joint School Travel Plans identified several areas for action such as safety engineering improvements to some key walking routes in the area around the school. These included requests for the provision of pavements and pedestrian crossings. As these were long term aims the school they felt they needed to do something in the short term to improve the safety of pedestrians and encourage more walking to school.

In co-operation with the local District Council, the school introduced a parking permit scheme to enable parents to park at specific times in the adjacent leisure centre car park. A new path was constructed in the school grounds to enable a gate between the car park and the school to be opened. Initially, 20 permits were issued. However, the scheme was so successful this has now increased to 50.

In addition to the parking permit scheme the school is keeping awareness raised by holding a series of ‘Walk to School’ days alongside the nationally organised Walk to School Weeks. The school regularly enter the School Travel Plan Team’s Walk to School Week competitions and recently won first prize for their school’s display of children’s experiences of walking to school. Information about walking to school is also frequently provided for parents – a point the school consider crucial to the ongoing success of the project.

Newquay Tretherras School

Success: a 100% increase in cycling to school (in the period 2004 – 2005)

Following their Safer Routes to School project the school benefited from improvements to its bus bays creating a safer drop off zone for pupils. The school have since been actively working to achieve the aims of their School Travel Plan and have been making some excellent progress.

In addition to raising awareness through curricula work, and inviting the Travel Awareness Team to hold workshops and lessons for pupils, the school continues to develop its School Travel Plan activities in the following ways:

• New cycle storage facilities have been installed on site with the help of the School Travel Plan capital grant. Over a four year period monitoring has shown that regular cycle users have increased from 16 to over 60 per day.
• Due to their active involvement in SRTS and STP schemes, the Travel Awareness Team have been able to apply for funding from the Department of Transport, through the Links to Schools scheme on their behalf. Funds from the school, this scheme and the County Council have paid for a new cycle and pedestrian route from the school to the local leisure centre and then on to the nearby National Cycle Network Route 36. This route not only provides easier access to the school for pupil pedestrians and cyclists, but also to the leisure centre for the local community.
• The school have an enthusiastic Travel Group who meet twice a month. They have been involved in the organisation of sustainable travel events, led assemblies, undertaken data collection tasks, started an after school Bike Club, reviewed their School Travel Plan and generally raised travel awareness to pupils and staff at the school.

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