school

Cycling as a travel option for school students has decreased significantly in the past 20 years.
Meanwhile, there is increasing evidence that the benefits of active transport, including cycling to school, are significant yet understated in transport planning. This suggests that there is a rationale for exploring how barriers to cycling to school might be overcome. 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.

Working with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) and North Shore City Council on the ‘Travelwise to School’ pilot project on the North Shore in 2002, we surveyed the parent community to ascertain their interest in various alternative modes for their children’s travel to and from school. We found that 87 of the 184 families who responded would allow their children to cycle to school in a group with another adult supervising their ride. One-third of these families offered to supervise the children on a rostered basis. This suggested that there was a high, albeit latent, interest in the wider community in what we call the ‘cycle train’. Because of this interest, we undertook to implement cycle train networks in New Zealand schools. The cycle train is similar in approach to another alternative way of getting children to and from school, the ‘walking school bus’ (WSB), where adult ‘conductors’ walk along a set route to school, collecting children from designated ‘bus stops’. The cycle train is essentially a ‘walking school bus’ on bicycle wheels.