There’s no doubt that there are health and mental wellbeing benefits for children who walk or cycle to school, and yet the roads and pavements around schools are often unsafe and chaotic at school start and finish times, as parents drop off and pick up their children by car.

Factoring in the narrow, crowded pavements and the high levels of pollution (which have an appalling impact on children’s health, particularly those with asthma), it all adds up to a pretty stressful experience for carers and children alike.

For some people, taking the car may sometimes or always be unavoidable. There are also many understandable fears about children’s travel to school and despite slight increases in children cycling and scooting, the numbers of children walking is falling. But ironically, many of the fears are related to the dangers of traffic. And furthermore, there is evidence that pollution levels inside cars are far higher than outside.

There are plenty of ways of breaking this vicious circle. Many schools actively encourage children to walk, cycle or scoot to school. Some have walking and cycling “buses” run by volunteer parents. Parents and carers who have far to travel can choose to park ten minutes or so from the school to give the children the benefit of walking some of the journey thereby reducing the amount of traffic round the schools. Local buses plus a short walk might also be a practical alternative. Some independent schools provide school buses with local pick up and drop off points. In Edinburgh there is a School Streets initiative that uses barriers or signs to limit vehicle access to the streets in the vicinity of the school at either end of the school day.

Many, recent reports evidence the importance of active travel for children and traffic reduction around schools, click here for further reading.

What can be done?

To date, none of the schools in the Corstorphine area have been part of the School Streets scheme, although the Covid-19 response by the council has seen a further introduction of closed streets and pavement-widening at the entrances of some of our schools as part of the Spaces for People programme.

We would like to see pavement-widening and street closures around all our local schools, and we would like to see them implemented as a permanent solution to the reduction in walking, and increase in traffic, that has become associated with getting to and from school. We also want to see more children walking, scooting and cycling safely to school. Priorities include:

  • Spaces for People measures such as pavement widening around school entrances being made permanent.
  • Spaces for People measures to help social distancing outside Craigmount High School being introduced without further delay.
  • School Streets being introduced around all our local primary schools.
  • The introduction of the bus gate element of the East Craigs LTN in order to reduce traffic outside Craigmount High School.
  • A reduction in the amount of children being dropped off and picked up in cars.

If you’re a parent, carer or local resident affected by the traffic at peak times, there are a number of things you could do to improve the situation:

  • You could find out about your own School Travel Plan. The Parent Council may already be working on some of the issues we’ve outlined above, if not, you could get involved and push for change.
  • If you currently use your car for the school run, are their other options you could realistically consider? For example, if you live too far away to walk, could you park ten minutes from the school so that you’re building in some active travel? Could you start a walking bus so that the supervising duties are shared with other parents on a rota basis?

You can also get involved by making your local councillors, and other representatives aware of your views.