Greater Manchester’s active travel commissioner Dame Sarah Storey has joined forces with the region’s mayor to urge schools to make it safer for children to walk, wheel or cycle to school.
Dame Sarah and mayor Andy Burnham are writing to schools across the city-region inviting them to develop their own ‘School Street’ – to limit traffic during drop off and pick up time.
Greater Manchester’s ambition to boost the existing number of School Streets from 30 to 100 in the next four years was set out by the mayor in his most recent manifesto.
As part of the next step in delivering this commitment, the mayor and Dame Sarah visited a School Street which is already having a positive impact in Old Trafford.
The pair joined a local family for their journey to Seymour Park Community Primary School, where they met other families alongside Trafford Council leader Tom Ross.
The school has delivered a range of measures to make it safer for families to walk, wheel and scoot, including closing roads to vehicles for a short period each day since January as part of a GM-wide pilot programme launched in 2021. The measures have seen car trips outside the school fall by 95% when the scheme is in place.
In most cases, a School Street consists of a range of measures outside to limit traffic during drop off and pick up time and create a pleasant child-friendly environment when the school gate is busiest.
Seymour Park is one of 30 School Streets operating in the region under the previous pilot – with those schemes largely manned by volunteer parents and residents to date.
Under new proposals, £1.3m will be invested with local authorities to develop the School Streets programme further, whereby School Streets can be made permanent, and be part of a range of interventions to ensure safer travel to school.
Currently around one-third of traffic at peak times in the morning or afternoon is from children being taken to school.
Dame Sarah Storey, active travel commissioner, said: “Safety and convenience are two of the main barriers to people choosing to walk, wheel or cycle to school and interventions like School Streets are a good starting point for improving the whole journey for those travelling to school and onward about their day.
“It’s important we reach as many schools as possible to share the benefits of the School Streets programme which is why we have written this letter and are encouraging schools to register their interest.
“Once this is underway further work can be added in, which is part of the wider draft School Travel Strategy due to be presented to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority later this month.
“Generating a focus on school travel is so important so that whole journeys can be catered for, and people given a genuine choice and alternative to having to use their car for the school drop off and pick up.”
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