Active Travel to School
Download our new quick guide to Active Travel brochure here (pdf, 5213KB)
Active Cumbria's Active Travel Team is committed to improving lives through physical activity and supports active and sustainable travel approaches for children, parents and carers across the county. Active travel involves travelling to school using physical activity such as walking, scooting or cycling. The county has several effective programmes in place to support schools to encourage modal shift towards regular active travel.
What are the benefits of Active Travel?
- An increase in daily physical activity to improve the health of children, families and carers
- Active travel can improve the mood of children arriving to school refreshed, alert and ready to learn
- Active travel can help children gain a better understanding of road safety and promote a feeling of independence
- A reduction in traffic congestion and air pollution on the school journey and around the school gates.
Active Cumbria supports a range of initiatives to help children and schools incorporate active travel into their daily journeys, details of which can be found below:
#StaySafeGetActive 5-minute walking bubbles
#StaySafeGetActive is a simple and effective scheme to encourage all pupils' parents to park at least 5 minutes away from school in order to create a safer space for children to walk, cycle or scoot to school. The scheme allows all children to gain the benefits of active travel within their daily journey to school even if they are not able to walk all the way from home. All schools in England can access a free Map Generator to create their personalised Walking Bubble.
For more information click here
Bikeability is an accredited national training programme to provide the skills and confidence for pupils to navigate the roads safely via bicycle. The county runs a successful programme throughout the academic year, and all schools are offered Bikeability training which progresses from Level 1 to Level 3.
For more information click here
Our Active Travel team also support and promote several other schemes including:
- School Streets - find out more here
- Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel (formerly Big Pedal) - find out more here
- Living Streets Walk to School Week - find out more here
Meet Your Active Travel Officers
Jodie Laird
(Cumberland)
Jennifer Free
(Westmorland and Furness)
jennifer.free@cumberland.gov.uk
Park and Stride Schemes....
...can help ease congestion around the school Gates. Click here to find out more.
