Each Stone school has been sent its own travel plan to help parents reduce school run congestion in September, encouraging pupils to walk, ride, park and stride back to school.
The County Council’s Active Travel team is working with all schools in a bid to reduce parents reliance on a car for getting their children to school.
Each school has a plan that can be shared with parents showing cycle and walking routes with safe crossing points and – if a car has to be used for part of the journey – places where parents can safely drop their children a little distance from school so they can walk the rest of the way. Anti-social parking can be a real problem around Stone schools with parents parking across driveways, over junctions and even on pavements.
Jonathan Price, Staffordshire County Council’s Cabinet member for Education (and SEND), said:
“Next month there will be 112,000 pupils in Staffordshire making their own way to and from school twice a day.
“We are very worried that in the current circumstances the number of people who travel to school by car will increase and bring more road congestion, parking problems outside already busy schools and increased air pollution.
“Many children walk or cycle already and that we want them to continue because that’s good for them and good for the environment, but we would say to everyone else please think now about how your children can get to school with as little car use as possible.”
Staffordshire County Council has been working through the summer with headteachers regarding travel planning for the autumn after updated government guidance was issued in July.
Parents are advised to regularly check their school’s website and Facebook page as appropriate for local plans, while help and advice for schools and parents about walking, cycling, ‘park and stride’ is available here.
Jonathan Price added:
“As well as moving 8,000 pupils on 800 Home to School transport routes every day, there are another 112,000 children moving back and forth daily.
“There is the potential for a great deal of school run disruption and I hope that schools and their communities can work together to ‘walk, ride, park and stride’ to reduce the number of cars at school gates.”
