Greater Manchester has set out its ambition to enable more children and young people to travel to school and college in an active and sustainable way.
Walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting to school or college has the potential to improve children and young people’s physical and mental health, and boost their attainment in lessons.
Meanwhile, travelling actively or via public transport can improve air quality near to schools, colleges and communities and reduce congestion for everyone on the transport network during pick up and drop off times.
A new draft School Travel Strategy is being developed as a shared priority between the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and the 10 local authorities.
Every day around 460,000 pupils travel to over 1,200 schools and further education establishments across Greater Manchester. Around15% of all trips in Greater Manchester are to access education, and in the peak periods between 8-9am and 3-4pm almost half of trips are education related.
Active Travel Commissioner, Dame Sarah Storey, said: “School Travel is one of my six priorities in the Active Travel Mission and it is important that we build on the positive impact of School Streets and broaden the scope of the work to make better use of all modes within the Bee Network for journeys to and from places of education.
“In order to enable young people and families to travel to school and further education on foot, bike or public transport; those choices need to feel safe, easy and accessible – and the draft School Travel Strategy sets out how we will be aiming to do this.
“A public consultation is being launched as part of this work so that we can better understand everyone’s journey needs and I hope pupils, parents, teachers and support staff at all of our education establishments will feed in to this so that we can refine the plans and make it work for everyone.”
As part of the draft strategy, Greater Manchester is aiming for 70% of primary school students in Greater Manchester to walk, wheel, scoot or cycle to school by 2030, up from 63% at present.
At secondary schools, the goal is for 80% of pupils to walk, wheel or cycle or use public transport to travel to school, up from 74%. The target for young people going to college or further education is also 80%, up from 66%.
