School travel plans (walking and cycling to school)

All schools in Midlothian have or are progressing a school travel plan. These are plans of how each school intends to influence travel to and from school.

School travel plans meet a list of council and government objectives. These include health, road safety, environmental and educational objectives.

A school travel plan is designed to reduce the number of private vehicles arriving at the school. This increases road safety around the school, reduces congestion, and provides a healthy and safe environment for children to walk and cycle to school.

Parents, pupils and staff who walk or cycle all or part of the journey to school are more healthy.

Initiatives and measures to encourage walking and cycling to school include;

• Road safety measures such as pedestrian crossings, traffic islands, 20mph zones, and traffic calming.
• Walking and cycling facilities including footways, cycleways, cycle parking, routes to school maps, footprints painted on footways, and waiting shelters.
• Park and Stride  - identified parking away from the school with safe walking routes to school.
• Walk to School Week  - education and participation in walking campaign with incentives.
• Bike Week  - education and participation in cycling to school.
• Cycle training  - Active School Co-ordinators train parents and helpers to provide cycling courses to pupils.
• Park Smart  - leaflets to parents highlighting better places to park, education to children, and enforcement of parking zones outside schools.
• Walking Bus where parents escort a number of children to school along a specifies route. High visibility clothing is provided and routes are assessed.

Recently some more sophisticated initiatives have been identified for high schools including healthy walking groups that pedometers are provided for and independent walking buses that parents are not involved in.

The possibilities are endless and pupils, parents, and staff have created particularly relevant and innovative schemes for their own schools.