Safe routes to school key in tackling childhood inactivity

If people put half as much effort into thinking about how they could make walking or cycling part of their daily travel arrangements as they do into thinking up excuses why it's not possible for them, then the problem would be solved.

Bottom line, a lot of people are lazy and cars are comfortable. Supposed lack of 'safe routes' is mostly a convenient excuse not to walk / cycle. For the most part pavements are safe, as is most road infrastructure.

Concentrating (meager) resources on the school run has quite a few advantages

Schools tend to be nearer home than an adults commute to work

School children can't drive

It helps form the habit that cycling is a viable option

Down side is it may re-inforce the stereotype that bikes are for kids.

Hopefully we could get high quality segregated cycle routes along main through roads and traffic calming on residential feeder roads (but probably end up with more paint)

We should also put in resources to help kids start such as bike "trains", picking up children along the route at set times so they can have accompanied journies

My (soon to be) 7 yo daughter has been asking to cycle to school. It's only a couple of miles but the only real route there is along a main road. It's supposed to be a 30mph limit but most drivers go at 40mph. She will have to ride on the footpath if we ever do allow her to cycle there.

My four kids have been cycling to school from about the age of about 10 - between half and three miles each way. This is great from an exercise point of view (none of them enjoy PE) but very frustrating that they've had to confront dangerous and discourteous drivers so frequently.

The most important aspect though, is that cycling becomes part of their routine, so my youngest,now 13, is comfortable going for a 30+ mile leisure ride with my wife and I, and the eldest has just finished A'levels and got her first job working for Deliveroo. 

My kids walk to school because there is no obvious route to cycle. The catchment is a third of a mile yet any people still drive there and park on the zigzags with impunity.

The only way to get people to cycle and walk more is to reduce the number of avaliable parking spaces and enforce it more rigorously than councils currently do. Perhaps a drop off point like a mcdonalds drive through so that the place to drop off is limited and restricted.

It worth remebering that (at least where I live in Manchester) many parents come from a cultures where cycling is unheard of, and so is walking to a large degree. Trying to convince these people that walking or cycling won't make you look poor will be hard.

Sustrans contribute little to the provision of high quality cycle facilities in the UK.  However, what they say here has lots of validity.

In Oxford there are 2 schools, one primary and one secondary, with car free access, one because the school is not approachable by car during school hours, one because it has an actual Dutch style cycle path.    They both have huge proportions of pupils arriving by bike.  

Off topic, but... My nine year old daughter and I cycled along the cycle path (NCN 42, I think) from our village to a nearby town this afternoon.

Despite signs saying motor vehicles prohibited, met two teenagers on scooters, which my daughter found pretty scary (especially the one who swerved in front of her rather than ride through some horse dung).

At the nearby town, locked up outside a Waitrose to get juice and a cake. She wanted to go to the seafront park area but I knew it was quite steep and there was no off road option so suggested we walk our bikes.  We approached a zebra crossing: I could see a large Merc approaching but not at speed and about two or three car lengths away, so told my daughter to start crossing. Merc didn't stop, just rolled forward until about halfway onto the zebra crossing. "I expect you to stop!", says I. At which Merc driver really goes off on one: apparently by letting my daughter use a zebra crossing I'm not being a good father and really putting her at risk (add extra profanity). I just shake my head and we walk on.

Point is: parents don't let kids cycle because they're afraid of all the danger, but don't think there's anything they themselves can do to reduce that perceived danger, and don't realise  that they might even form a part of that perceived danger.

Something very wrong when my parenting skills in letting my daughter walk her bike across a busy road using a zebra crossing are being criticised by the twunt who wouldn't stop for that zebra crossing (disclaimer: I *am* a terrible dad, but on this point I don't think that's relevant).

Sustans - the Marshall Quislings of the cycling world. A significant barrier to getting more kids cycling is the fact that Sustrans will sign off any old rubbish as top quality cycling infrastructure, so long as it means they get their next council grant.

The biggest thing that Sustrans could do for cycling is to refuse to endorse any cycling infrastructure which is below the quality of infrastructure in the Netherlands, Copenhagen, Seville etc.

To get kids active, take their mobile phones off them. 

I live in a little village where the activities of local kids are easily noted and it's true, they no longer spend much time outside.  I guess a combination of worried parents and the lure of the games console keeps them indoors.  And that's a pity 'cause there are so many benefits in just playing and socialising in the fresh air.

On the other hand it's been several years since I had to return a football that strayed into my vegetable patch.  It's an ill wind and all that .....

Deeply disappointing that Sustrans think the only places that children go it to school. This is a false assumption, we need safer communities where kids can safely do anywhere.

The great city is not the one that has highways, but one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle can go safely everywhere.

– Enrique Peñalosa