School Travel (Hansard, 12 May 2004)

§ Mr. Spellar

The Chief Executive of Roads Service (Dr. Malcolm McKibbin) has written to the hon. Lady directly in response to these questions.

Letter from Dr. Malcolm McKibbin to Lady Hermon, dated 11 May 2004:

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has asked me to respond to your recently tabled Parliamentary Questions about funding allocated to develop school travel plans in Northern Ireland and what assessment has been made of the six safe routes to schools pilots that are being developed.

You will be aware that, as proposed by the Regional Transportation Strategy 2002–12, Roads Service has been working to address the issue, of the 'school run', given its impact on morning traffic congestion, through the "Safer Routes to Schools" initiative with the aim of encouraging more children to walk, cycle and use public transport for their journey to school.

The Department of Education, the Department of the Environment Road Safety Team and other agencies are working alongside Roads Service in this project. The following six schools are currently participating in the initiative: 395W

St. Joseph's College, Belfast;
Oakwood Integrated Primary School, Dunmurry;
Wallace High School, Lisburn;
St. Anthony's Primary School, Craigavon;
Parkhall College, Antrim; and St. Brigid's College, Londonderry.

This is the first time a schools initiative to promote sustainable modes of transport in response to a traffic congestion issue has been undertaken in Northern Ireland. Measures at the six schools are mainly exploratory and at different stages of development. The overall aim is to assist each school in developing a travel plan, which sets out a package of measures for reducing the number of car trips made to school. Where appropriate, Roads Service will subsequently introduce improvements to the roadway such as installing pedestrian facilities and traffic calming measures to facilitate children who may want to walk, cycle and use public transport. Additionally, other measures such as cycle shelters and lockers are provided by the Department of Education inside the schools premises.

To get the school travel initiative started, Roads Service and its partners have spent nearly £85,000 over the last three years (2001/02-£ nil, 2002/03-£48,391, 2003/04-£36,253) on assisting development of travel plans for the participating schools. The funding was used to investigate existing infrastructure and facilities at the schools, examine accident data, undertake surveys to establish baseline school travel information and pay for the training of a Travel Plan Co-ordinator who was appointed to champion the initiative in the schools. This work was followed by the preparation of draft travel plans, which were given over to the schools to take ownership of and develop in line with the ethos of the school and its thinking on the sustainable transport concept. No specific funding has been allocated yet for the further development of travel plans as resources are being concentrated for the time being on the pilot group of six schools. However, it is intended, as part of the next stage of the initiative, to develop a practical support package that encourages other schools to engage in the travel plan process.

The improvements to the infrastructure and facilities at each of the pilot schools will be completed this financial year. While we will undertake a preliminary assessment at the end of the school year 2004/05 of how successful these measures have been, initial work including installation of cycle shelters at the schools has had very positive results and generated an increase in cycling among pupils for the school journey. It is anticipated that the planned infrastructure work to the road network adjacent to the schools should have equal effect in facilitating and encouraging more children to use sustainable modes of transport.

I hope this information is helpful.