Active and sustainable travel

Active and sustainable travel is about making journeys in ways that are healthier and more environmentally friendly. This could be through walking, wheeling and cycling or by taking public transport.

Being more active and sustainable for school journeys can have lots of benefits for pupils, parents, local residents and schools - such as reducing travel time and costs, improving health and wellbeing, improving air quality, improving road safety outside schools and reducing complaints.

Schools have an important role to play in active and sustainable travel by helping to provide the skills and improving the confidence of students and their care-givers. With these actions schools can help to change travel behaviour, increase road safety and reduce congestion outside of schools.

Some quick wins that your school could do:

• Take up the support offered by our Road Safety Education Team. Visit the Council's website for more information.
  
• Sign up for free Bikeability training. Visit the Bikeright website for more information.
• Sign up for Let's Walk, a child pedestrian training programme coordinated by the Council's Road Safety team for year 3 and 4 children.
• Take part in Living Streets WOW initiative (the walk to school challenge). WOW is a year-round, pupil-let initiative where children self-report how they get to school every day using the interactive WOW Travel Tracker. Find out more on our here.
• Install secure scooter and bike racks so pupils feel safe leaving their property on site.
• Explore setting up a park and stride scheme, where families who live further away from school can park further away from the school and walk in.
• Join in with national campaigns to encourage active travel such as Walk to School and Bike Week.
• Promote travel plans – create an action plan, log the actions and monitor changes in how pupils travel by using Modeshift STARS.
  

For information on local active transport initiatives please contact: roadsafety@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk

Watch a short video explaining how the WOW initiative by Living Streets works.