School travel plans

Abstract

Promoting active travel modes is a logical way to improve health outcomes, enhance social capital and reduce traffic-related congestion. With this focus in mind, Auckland Transport (formerly known as Auckland Regional Transport Authority) and Green Communities Canada developed a series of School Travel Plan (STP) initiatives in schools. The initiatives encompassed educational and promotional campaigns to promote carpooling and active transportation, combined with the Walking School Bus, cycle training for students, parking restrictions, building of traffic-calming measures and improvement of roads and footpaths. STP offered a mixture of soft (cultural shift, school policy) and hard (traffic-calming devices, pedestrian crossings) environmental modifications. A key to STP was the collaboration between schools, local community and other stakeholders to develop travel strategies tailored to meet the needs of individual schools. In this chapter, we describe the implementation and evaluation of STP in Canada and New Zealand, and identify key lessons learnt from the experience. Recommendations for future practice and research are also presented.