Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, has announced that levels of cycling in schools benefiting from its Bike It initiative have doubled from 26% of pupils cycling to reach their place of study at least once a week, compared to 13% before the project began. Sustrans says that the figures provide evidence that cycling to school can help improve transport options for local authorities facing budget cuts of £311 million.
The figures have been revealed as part of Sustrans’s annual Bike It Project Review, which also shows that the proportion of schoolchildren cycling every day has more than trebled from 3% to 10%. Meanwhile, the percentage of children being driven by car every day to schools participating in the project has dropped from 29% to 22%.
Paul Osborne, Sustrans Director of School Travel, commented: “The Bike It project continues to lead the way as one of the UK’s most successful projects bringing about change in the travel behaviour of young people. Sustrans now works with over 800 schools and reaches approximately 150,000 children.”
He continued: “These latest figures come at a time of major cuts in local authority funding for school transport. As pupils’ journeys become longer, cycling projects such as Bike It play an important role in making a wider choice of schools accessible to their students.
Mr Osborne added: “We know that children who cycle to school are much more likely to be physically active than their peers – reducing the chance of children becoming obese and developing diabetes. Bike It also promotes road safety and cuts the number of cars on the road.”
The Bike It project, which is funded by bodies including Cycling England, the Department for Transport, the cycle industry’s Bike Hub levy, the Big Lottery Fund's Well-being Programme, the Welsh Assembly Government, Transport for London and other local authorities and primary care trusts, has been in operation for five years now in England and two years ago was expanded Wales and Northern Ireland in 2008.
The initiative sees Sustrans working in partnership with schools, teachers, parents and local authorities to help deliver cycle training as well as taking part in classroom work and giving information regarding safe routes to school, helping children overcome the barriers that stop them from cycling to school.
The usual heuristic cited is once every 12 months or every 5000 uses, whichever comes first. Personally I can't really see what the passage of time...
Took me several goes to parse this and realise that there wasn't some kind of bizarre personation scheme going on:
I know it's sponsored content and so are certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected but really, if these are "the best brake pads in the world"...
You mean because Queen Victoria got herself cloned and then built a new fleet of warships somewhere in the Unknown Regions (Norfolk)?
The grip that the right wing reactionaries have on the gullible public is frightening, and this is just a microcosm of that influence, with so many...
I bought a Topeak Joe Blow Sport III Pump about 9 months ago, quite frankly, I was not impressed with it. The base has too much flex it in it, the...
Ride single file, stay close to the curb? Where I live, I get people screaming at cyclists telling them they don't belong on the road, I was...
The worst thing about all this is learning that Bon Scott's family tried to make sunglasses with his name on.
There's a whiff of Martin73 about that post from whosatthewheel.
I assumed that a commuter road was like the Room of Requirement - it travels to wherever people need to drive on it.