Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Sustainable Modes of Travel to School Strategy 2010 Contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 4 2 Strategy summary ............................................................................ 5 2.1 Why we are doing it .......................................................................5 2.2 What we already do .......................................................................5 2.3 What we hope to achieve ..............................................................5 3 Educations and Inspection Act ........................................................ 6 4 Borough information ........................................................................ 7 5 Educational establishments ............................................................. 8 5.2 Admissions ...................................................................................8 5.3 Pupils Educated in the Royal Borough ...........................................8 5.4 Royal Borough residents educated elsewhere ................................9 6 How pupils travel to school .............................................................10 6.2 All schools ...................................................................................10 6.3 Schools with travel plans .............................................................12 6.4 Secondary school travel ..............................................................13 6.5 14 to 19 Diploma Scheme ...........................................................13 6.6 Primary school pupil travel ...........................................................14 6.7 Transport provision for special education establishments .............14 6.8 Distance travelled to school .........................................................15 6.9 Travel to school by age ................................................................15 6.10 Preferred mode of travel to school ...............................................16 6.11 Barriers to preferred mode of travel ..............................................17 6.12 Extended schools ........................................................................18 7 Transport provisions in the borough ...............................................18 7.1 Cycle infrastructure ......................................................................18 7.2 Walking infrastructure ..................................................................20 7.3 Public transport infrastructure ......................................................21 7.4 Road network ..............................................................................22 8 Road safety in the borough and its effect on children .................. 23 9 The Royal Borough’s approach to sustainable travel.................... 26 9.1 School travel plans ......................................................................26 9.2 Infrastructure improvement ..........................................................28 9.3 Promotion ...................................................................................31 9.4 Training .......................................................................................33 9.5 Enforcement ................................................................................37 10 Targets ........................................................................................... 38 2 1 Introduction 1.1 The Council’s Sustainable Modes of Travel Strategy (SMOTS) was drafted in 2009 to reflect the Council’s work promoting sustainable modes of travel to school, whilst also presenting a coherent policy for the continued delivery of this agenda. This is the first revision of the Council’s SMOTS and represents an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the last year. While the fundamental aims and objectives (as well as many of the initiatives which the Council deploys to achieve them) will not have changed significantly over the last 12 months, this updated strategy document draws on the most recent data relating to the modes of travel that children, staff and parents are using in the borough. 1.2 Furthermore, this review is an opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of the Council’s work in promoting sustainable modes of travel to school by examining this updated data. Over the past year, the Council has worked hard to achieve the London-wide target of all schools having a school travel plan. Achieving this target has meant creating a huge intake of schools which are entirely new to the school travel plan process; this, in turn, has had a significant impact on the headline data in terms of modal split in the Royal Borough. As many of the new schools are very new to the promotion of sustainable modes of travel, their modal data often reflects much higher levels of car usage. Therefore, while the fact that the Council has attained 100 per cent engagement in the school travel plan programme is an achievement in and of itself, the inclusion of this new information into the borough’s overall modal split data does have the potential to skew any reflection of the overall effectiveness of the Council’s activities in promoting sustainable travel. 1.3 For this reason, this strategy examines not only the overall data collected by all schools with a travel plan, but also examines such data for those schools that have been engaged in the promotion of sustainable travel since before the original SMOTS was drafted in 2009. Examination of the data for these schools yields some very encouraging results. Most notably, active travel to school among pupils has risen from 46 per cent to 54 per cent of the overall modal split - a significant achievement which exceeds last year’s target of 50 per cent. 3 The increase in ‘scooting’ is also notable in these schools, rising from three per cent to seven per cent of the overall modal split. The fact that the number of children scooting to school has more than doubled over the course of one year is particularly encouraging, as it suggests that the Council’s newly launched scooter training initiative, ‘ScootSurfers’, is proving effective in encouraging children to use this mode. Single-use car journeys have also dropped from 23 per cent to 20 percent of the overall modal split in these schools, proving that the increase in forms of active travel is not simply a case of children switching from one sustainable mode to another. 1.4 Finally, this updated strategy is an opportunity to consider ways in which the Council will refocus its efforts in light of the achievements of the last year, in order to sustain the positive trends outlined by the most recently collected modal data. 4 2 Strategy summary 2.1 Why we are doing it Since the 1980s, the proportion of children travelling to school by car has almost doubled, and school-related traffic now makes up 18 per cent of vehicles on London’s roads at peak times in the school term. Congestion impacts negatively on local air quality and local road safety. Parents' concerns about road safety have resulted in it being more likely for children to be accompanied by an adult on their journey to school. As a consequence, there has been a reduction in children’s road skills and an increase in sedentary travel modes, even though 63 per cent of Kensington and Chelsea students would prefer to travel by bicycle or on foot. The change in travel patterns has had a massive impact on children’s health; obesity levels have almost doubled since 1995. It is therefore vital that the Council sets out a clear strategy for increasing the number of children travelling to school by healthy, more sustainable modes. 2.2 What we already do The Council has been working closely with schools since 2004 to enable sustainable travel through the establishment of school travel plans. All schools in the borough now have a travel plan. The Council supports schools through education, enforcement, engineering and training to increase the proportion of children travelling by sustainable modes. 2.3 What we hope to achieve Effective delivery of this strategy will result in it being the norm in the Royal Borough for students to travel by sustainable modes. The strategy will contribute to improving the health of all pupils in the borough and will give students every possible opportunity to walk or cycle. It builds on the Council’s School Travel Strategy by encompassing all school-related travel by children up to the age of 19. The following are the key objectives of this strategy: • Implement school travel plans. As all schools in the borough now have travel plans; the objective of this strategy is to ensure the plans are implemented. In doing so, schools will be encouraged to strive for accreditation by Transport for London. 5 • Increase walking. The Council aims to increase the number of trips made on foot at all schools and colleges in the borough. • Increase cycling. This strategy focuses on increasing the number of students cycling to school or college and the level of resident families taking part in cycling programmes. • Increase scootering. As a result of this strategy, the number of students scootering to school safely and considerately will increase. • Decrease car journeys. The primary function of this strategy is to promote sustainable transport options and reduce car use. • Develop partnerships. The success of this strategy is reliant on effective partnership working. New links will be created and current partnerships developed further. • Improve road safety.