Biking boost

Sustrans scheme gets school kids in the saddle

A fourfold increase in kids cycling to school? Remarkable but true - though not, sadly, nationwide. Only selected schools can claim this improvement: those involved in the ‘Bike It’ project.

Under this scheme, project officers funded by the bicycle industry have been working closely with schools and local authorities in four cities (Derby, York, Manchester and Bristol) to promote cycle use, especially among pupils aged 9-12. Across the UK as a whole, fewer than 2% of all school journeys are made by bike - a lamentable record compared with Denmark’s 50%. The Bike It schools have at least got their average up to 8% - and one York primary school is up to an almost Danish level of one cyclist per three pupils.

A third of the new converts were former sufferers of that dreaded car-borne affliction, the ironically named ‘school run’. Just one year into the scheme, all this represents “a shining example of what can be achieved”, in the words of Paul Osborne, the Safe Routes to Schools director at Sustrans, the organisation behind Bike It.

Asked to identify the main factors in changing behaviour, head teachers said that promotional events were a good way of sparking off children’s interest, and providing secure bike storage helped a lot, as did the information and advice from Bike It. Another big motivator was cycle training. Conversely, it doesn’t exactly help when there are ‘no cycling’ rules. But the Bike It project got these scrapped at no less than 19 schools, each of which now has cycling rates well above the national average. - Roger East

7 January 2006

Roger East