Page 118 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2019
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program was established to provide dedicated traffic management and safety support to schools, with a core focus on encouraging more children to walk or ride to school as the desired outcome.
The schools program provides a central point of contact for schools, parents and the community to raise school-related traffic management and active travel issues. These issues are then assessed by experts within the directorate and the solutions are then delivered in conjunction with school communities. Members will be aware that under the schools program there are several indicatives, including the active streets for schools, school crossing supervisors and ride or walk to school programs.
Active streets for schools is focused on making the environment around schools safer and easier for students to ride, walk, scooter or skate to and from school. The program delivers active travel infrastructure improvements and way finding with pavement stencils to help students and families identify safe routes to school. Educational resources are also provided to schools and families, which include maps of the safest walking routes or part way drop-off points for parents who must drive to drop their children at an appropriate car park nearby.
Active streets was first piloted at four Belconnen primary schools in 2015-16. The results from the pilot were very encouraging, with strong growth of around a five per cent increase in the number of students walking and riding to school within the first 12 months.
Following the success of this pilot the program was expanded to an additional 25 schools between 2016 and 2018, and last year the government announced that active streets would be further expanded to an additional 52 schools. The additional 52 schools were selected following an expression of interest process run by TCCS. All the schools that nominated will be included in the expanded active streets for schools program.
The school crossing supervisors program commenced in 2018 at 20 schools. The schools were selected based on a range of criteria, including pedestrian and traffic volumes, the location and size of the school, safety considerations and the proximity of the crossing to other schools in the area.
To support schools as part of the new integrated public transport network in 2019, the government has added an additional five school crossing supervisors to the program. The school crossing supervisors program is currently being evaluated. Early results coming out of the evaluation are positive, with almost 75 per cent of respondents to surveys indicating that traffic danger has reduced greatly as a result of the crossing supervisor.
School crossing supervisors are making a strong contribution to improving road safety at ACT schools, but they are not a silver bullet on their own either. Some schools have low levels of traffic and would gain very little from having a crossing supervisor. I would like to reiterate my point that every school is different and that a tailored approach is required to ensure that road safety at each individual school is properly addressed.
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