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School travel plans
Coordinator's guide
Print version: School travel plans - Coordinator's guide (PDF, 547 KB, 50 pages)
- 2.1 Set-up phase
- 2.2 Data collection phase
- 2.3 Action planning phase
- 2.4 Implementation and monitoring phase
2. Phases of a school travel plan
Figure 2: Phases of a school travel plan
2.1 Set-up phase
2.1.1 Overview
Table 5: How to establish the foundations of the school travel plan
| Objectives |
|---|
The objectives of the set-up phase are to:
|
| Steps |
|
1 Contact the principal and discuss the benefits for their school having a travel plan. |
| Important themes |
|
| Indicative timeframe |
|
The set-up phase usually takes from one to three months, but may be delayed to fit into the school calendar or other major events (eg change of key staff). |
| Completion of set-up phase |
|
The coordinator has completed the set-up phase once the school agrees to participate and an overall timeline has been determined, aims have been set and an evaluation framework agreed to. |
2.1.2 Steps
1 Make contact with the school
Note: it’s a good idea to make contact with the council traffic engineer before contacting a school to discuss their involvement. They can alert you to any traffic issues associated with the school.
At your first meeting with the principal, it’s useful to:
- provide them with
- a written document summarising what a school travel plan is
- an overview of the school travel plan process (use the flowchart on page 10 as an aid to discussion)
- an overview of how their school can benefit from the school travel plan
- gain an overall impression of the school
- number of students
- breakdown of students
- decile rating
- special features
- perceived issues
- involvement in Roadsense Ata Harae, Enviroschools or any other extracurricular programmes
- determine the next step in gaining commitment to the travel plan process, which may be a presentation to staff or the board of trustees.
The sample section contains a template ‘School summary recording sheet’. This information forms the basis of an overall school profile. (See the section on the data collection phase.)
2 Gain principal and/or board agreement to proceed
The principal/board will discuss and agree the overall objectives and timeline. Obtain written commitment of the principal or board to continue, as this will help if there is a change in personnel during the creation of the plan and/or its implementation.
3 Identify stakeholders and possible working group members and their roles
Involve the principal, and possibly some or all of the trustees, in identifying the school’s key stakeholders. Apart from parents, students and staff, does the school have other stakeholders that should be included? For example, does the school want the local business association involved? Who is the local police education officer? Are there iwi or other community-based groups with strong connections to the school?
Make a note of these stakeholders and the best way to contact and approach them.
4 Determine overall aims and evaluation process
It’s important to establish the school’s overall aims for the school travel plan. These can be revisited at the action planning phase, but discussing them at this stage helps focus the whole process. The evaluation process and aims are strongly linked. Aims should be written so they can be measured by the intended evaluation process.
The following are example aims and evaluation methods.
- Reduce the number of children arriving by car by 10 percent in the first year. (Evaluated by re-surveying all students and parents one year after the initial survey.)
- Create a school travel policy by the end of term 2, 2008. (Evaluated by the school travel plan coordinator at the end of term 2, 2008.)
- Integrate road safety and environment learning into classroom exercises that relate to the travel plan within the first year. (Evaluated by the lead teacher at the end of the travel plan’s first year of implementation.)
Objectives and actions will be added to these aims after the travel surveys and site assessment have been completed.
5 Prepare a timeline for the school travel plan process
A timeline is critical for ensuring the school is prepared for their involvement in the various steps of the process. This also allows for school events to be integrated into the process. For example, integrating part of the consultation process into a planned parent–teacher evening ensures a maximum number of parents (and students) are involved.
The timeline does not have to be detailed but should contain:
- a list of the actions or tasks that need to be completed (eg writing the travel plan document)
- an indication of when school events (eg sports days) occur and how the travel plan ties in with them
- the names of the people responsible for completing each task (eg the travel plan coordinator aided by the working group)
- the timeframe (ie how long each task should take and when each phase should be completed).
2.2 Data collection phase
2.2.1 Overview
Table 6: How to compile data that identifies transport and safety issues concerning the school
| Objectives |
|---|
The objectives of the data collection phase are to:
|
| Steps |
|
1 Complete school profile. |
| Important themes |
|
| Indicative timeframe |
The data collection phase usually takes about one school term. |
| Completion of data collection phase |
|
The coordinator has completed the data collection phase when the wider school community has been provided with an opportunity to comment on the survey results. |
2.2.2 Steps
1 Complete school profile
The school profile brings together the following information;
- names and contact details of key people associated with the school (eg staff, board of trustees, lead teacher/school travel plan liaison, kaumatua)
- student residence data (see below)
- demographic information about the school community, including decile rating, cultural breakdowns and other relevant student information
- other relevant details regarding classroom structure, teaching approaches and resources available within the school
- operational details (eg timetables, assembly times and format, staff meeting times and format)
- communication channels between school and home
- special event days in the school calendar
- information relating to transport and road safety policies, practices and programmes
- information about major roads, students travelling in from outside the school zone and any recent environmental changes that impact on road safety
- involvement in Roadsense Ata Harae, Enviroschools or other initiatives
- any additional information that will contribute to the overall knowledge of the school’s culture.
Student residence data
A list of student addresses is essential for the school profile (names of individual students are not required). Most schools can provide student residence data in an Excel spreadsheet. This data can be used very effectively by council GIS staff to show where students live in relation to the school and the transport options available to them. Some coordinators have found it best to request this information at the outset (ie at the set-up phase).
The school profile document should be kept as user friendly as possible, eg a simple short summary of key points with appendices for data. Its importance to the process should be explained and a copy of the completed document should be offered to the school.
The school profile can be completed by the principal or the coordinator from information provided by the principal. The profile builds on the initial information gained in the set-up phase.
Tip: some schools produce a prospectus containing useful information about the school’s aims and structure. School newsletters, new entrant information brochures or packs, new enrolment kits and ERO reports may also provide additional useful information about the school community.
2 Inform the school community
This step is about informing the wider community of the travel plan and the part they will play in its development (such as completing travel surveys). Communication options include the following.
- School newsletter. Some schools have used the general school newsletter as the vehicle for informing parents about the school travel plan. The school newsletter also provides a way of conveying frequent travel plan and road safety messages to parents and students.
- Special meeting/presentation. It can be useful to hold a special meeting or series of meetings to announce the programme, introducing the aims and main components along with an outline of what will happen.
- Regular school event (eg parent–teacher night). Piggybacking on another school event that involves parents is a useful way to interact and raise awareness of the school travel plan.
- School websites. The coordinator could provide information for the school’s website or create a page for the travel plan. This would keep the school updated on results and upcoming events and involve the students.
3 Conduct travel and stakeholder surveys
The most common method of gathering the information required is to provide children with a survey questionnaire, along with a local area map that they fill out in class time or as a homework exercise. Different surveys have been designed for junior classes that the teacher fills out on behalf of the class.
A survey for parents is also sent home with the children, including a covering letter explaining the survey’s purpose and how the information will be used.
Travel surveys aim to gather five main types of data about the journey to and from school.
- How students currently get to school. This data shows the extent to which sustainable travel options are currently being used. It also provides a baseline for future surveys, which provides a measure of the impact of the travel plan on students’ travel behaviour.
- How students would like to get to school. This data will provide insights into potential sustainable travel options if current barriers and issues are removed or resolved.
- The reasons why students don’t currently use sustainable travel options. This provides information on current barriers to, or issues about, sustainable travel options.
- The likely response of students and parents to different travel measures. This provides an initial response to common travel plan measures, such as a walking school bus or monitored pedestrian crossings.
- The change in parental driving patterns. Discovering changes in parental driving habits as a result of the travel plan is fundamental to evaluating the plan’s environmental benefits. If parents no longer drive their children to school, they may also no longer drive to work (thereby further reducing congestion and pollution).
Tip: Use incentives to gain a better survey return – a response rate of more than 50 percent is good and less than 30 percent is poor. Incentives can be aimed at the children or families. In some cases, a hierarchy of incentives has worked well (eg a road safety bookmark for all children who return their homework survey, or a prize draw for sports equipment or bike helmets for families who do).
Further techniques and tips for conducting the school travel surveys are provided in the resources section in chapter 3.
4 Carry out further consultation
Further consultation is required to increase awareness and give people the opportunity to comment on issues. At the very least, the school community should have the opportunity to review the collated data and provide the coordinator and/or working group with their comments and suggestions.
The coordinator should work with the school to devise the best form of consultation for the circumstances. Some schools may wish to carry out Planning for Real ® (described below), while others may find it more appropriate to consult in a less intensive manner during a school event. One school created display boards to show ideas formulated by the working group. This has worked well in the past and is described in the action planning phase.
Planning for Real ®
In some New Zealand schools, a mapping technique called Planning for Real ® has been used to consult with students and parents on the range of issues affecting their journey to and from school. This technique involves creating a 3D map of the school and wider road network. Children mark their houses, routes to school and where they’ve identified problems. Parents are then invited (usually during a parent–teacher evening) to add their ideas and issues to the map. This technique is resource and time intensive, but has proven useful at increasing community involvement and identifying all travel issues.
Case study – North Shore City Council and Planning for Real ®
As part of its TravelWise1 project, the North Shore City Council uses the Planning for Real ® 3D mapping technique to add another dimension to its community consultation. The TravelWise team has found this exercise immensely successful in gaining community buy-in and understanding the feelings of the community towards transport issues in their area.
Here’s how it works. First, the TravelWise team gets their council’s GIS department to generate four AO-sized maps of the area around each school, ensuring the area incorporates the majority of the students’ home locations. The maps are then set up for a day in the school library.
In groups of six, the children are invited to come in and colour in the location of their home on the map, adding a coloured sticker beside their house to represent how they get to school the majority of the time (red = car, blue = walk, green = walking school bus).
The TravelWise coordinators then ask each child if there are any issues on their journey to and from school, and whether they’d like to be part of a walking school bus.
Beside the map are a number of different cards with particular issues, such as ‘angry dog’ or ‘pedestrian crossing needed’ which the children can stick to the map at the location of the issue. Often the children have different issues which the TravelWise coordinators can discuss with them and then write on a blank card and stick to the map.
The children love the interaction with the map and it’s a very visual way to see where they live, where the issues are and how they currently travel to and from school.
The maps are then rebuilt at the school in the evening, usually coinciding with parent-teacher interviews or a similar school event. Parents are invited to find their house, which their child has coloured in on the map previously and add to the map any issues they have about their child’s journey to and from school, in the same way their children did.
By talking directly with parents or residents, the TravelWise team are discovering major issues firsthand, along with possible solutions. They also have the ability to market the walking school bus and engage potential ‘bus drivers’.
When completed, the map represents a holistic visual display of all the travel issues faced by the children of that school.
1 TravelWise is the name given to a programme run by the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) in partnership with the local councils in the region.
TravelWise travel plan coordinators Megan Farrington and
Alison Johnsdiscuss school travel with pupils of Devonport Primary
5 Undertake traffic and pedestrian counts
Another possible investigation method is to carry out traffic and pedestrian counts. These counts provide a useful baseline of travel activity and involve counting the number of:
- cars parked in the streets around the school
- bikes in the bike stand
- vehicles travelling past key points around the school
- students and adults walking past key points around the school.
If traffic and pedestrian counts are to be used for assessing the impact of travel plan policies over time, they should be carried out at least twice yearly to take account of seasonal fluctuations.
Tip: an easy student survey can be carried out over a week by doing a hand count of each class (or sample of classes). Children are asked to raise their hands if they walked, cycled, bused or came by car. This can take just a few minutes per class and can be done by the teacher. A sample recording sheet for this exercise is provided in the resources section in chapter 3.
6 Compile and analyse data
Experience suggests that, while the coordinator is likely to undertake this task, it’s helpful to have some assistance. It’s possible that the task or parts of it could be shared with members of the working group or outsourced. This especially applies to data entry.
All the information from the surveys and any other consultation should be analysed. In recording the routes walked and cycled by children, each road and street is assigned a separate tally sheet to give an individual profile of use and problems.
The main objectives are to identify the:
- number of children using each road
- number of children crossing intersections at peak times
- hazards or safety concerns.
If this information is entered into a spreadsheet, it is relatively easy for a GIS expert to convert it into a printable map (or series of maps). Discussions with council staff (GIS or corporate services) will enable the coordinator to best plan this.
Once this information is summarised, it’s possible to identify the most frequently used routes and intersections, and assess appropriate travel options and issues that should be resolved (eg addressing major hazards).
7 Carry out site assessment and school policy analysis
The site assessment provides a description of the school’s physical environment in terms of its travelrelated facilities and infrastructure. It also outlines the school’s travel policies.
The following are the key elements of a site assessment.
- A plan of the school and surrounding road networks. This locates the school within its environment and how it fits within the surrounding road network. This plan should also include information on bus, cycle and pedestrian routes, car parking areas and their designation, and any traffic problems arising from the school journey. Mention should also be made of current planning applications or construction work, including start and completion dates.
- School entrance description. This description of the ‘school gate’ includes information relating to housing, parking, vehicles, pedestrians, road markings (eg clearways) and other road users.
- Crossing the road. It is useful to locate any school crossing patrols and other crossing facilities, and observe how these facilities are being used by children, as well as record any issues for people crossing the road where there are no crossing facilities. Police education officers could be consulted regarding information about school patrols, as they train the school traffic safety teams.
- School travel policies. The site assessment should also include an analysis of any current school policies that may impact on the travel plan. For example, policies regarding school uniform should be reviewed to ensure uniforms are appropriate for children who want to walk or cycle to school. Further information about school policies is found in chapter 3.
Tip: site assessments are particularly useful for observing safety-related issues. The involvement of a traffic engineer or other trained professional is invaluable. Photos of key issues (eg double parking, unsafe crossing points) are useful communication tools for community consultation and action planning.
8 Prepare a school travel report
The school travel report details all the transport and road safety issues identified in the data collection phase. The report format should organise the data to be easily interpreted and used by the working group to develop the action plan.
A draft of the report should be fed back to the school community using some form of consultation process.
The following report format is suggested as a guide:
- introduction – outlining the purpose of the report and how the data was gathered, and noting the response rate
- modes of travel – summarising the various modes of travel and percentage of children using these (graphs are an effective way of presenting this information)
- danger spots/key sites – summarising the key sites (eg intersections and crossing points), highlighting danger spots and describing the dangers (maps and photos are particularly useful)
- road safety issues – summarising concerns from the perspective of children, parents/caregivers and other key informants
- action points to be addressed – listing suggested issues for the working party to discuss and prescribe actions for.
Some coordinators have prepared detailed reports, while others have found it useful to keep the report to a couple of pages.
The coordinator presents this information to the working group once it has been formed. Again, the most appropriate format will depend on the group – some may only want an informal chat, while others may appreciate a presentation by the coordinator. It can be easy for the working group to focus only on the environment immediately outside the school. Therefore, it’s important to write and present the report in such a way to help it look at the broader community and road environment.
A school travel plan is sometimes implemented in a context where problems have long been identified but not addressed. Sometimes there has been a build up of expectations and ideas about what needs to happen, and strong feelings about who is responsible for these things not happening. It may be useful to consider at this time whether you’ll be likely to encounter resistance from any members of the working group when addressing issues.
The coordinator will often be required to introduce new ways of looking at issues and moving people beyond their comfort zones. It is useful and necessary to identify when this might be required and develop strategies for it.
It can also be useful to have preliminary discussions with individual working group members so they are well informed. This can be particularly advisable where a report highlights the probable need for major engineering works. Giving the council traffic engineer an opportunity to prepare can be very important.
When the draft report has being formulated and reviewed by the working group, it’s important to show it to some of the wider school travel plan stakeholders. These stakeholders may include the following.
Local government
It’s assumed that school travel plan coordinators will have been engaged by either regional or city/district councils. Liaising with city/district council transport staff and road safety coordinators will be essential for successfully implementing school travel plan measures. These relationships should ideally be established before engaging with schools in developing travel plans. Timely communication of progress being made by schools with their travel plan will help council staff to schedule their resources effectively.
Every effort should also be made to engage with the council’s community board (or equivalent) for the area in which the school is located. Assisting the school to secure political support for their proposed travel plan initiatives will be particularly helpful in the implementation phase.
Residents
Any changes made to how students get to and from school will impact on those who live in the immediate vicinity of the school. For example, any reductions in peak-time traffic levels will benefit these people. Residents will often have opinions about safety measures and be able to provide useful supplementary information or ideas to avoid costly mistakes.
The easiest approach is a letterbox drop with a simple questionnaire asking residents whether they feel there are any dangerous roads or locations within the local road network. You should also ask what makes them dangerous and what improvements they would suggest. Be sure to include your contact details should they have questions.
Police
Consulting with the police is an important step in the process, as there are many parts of the school travel plan that involve police staff. Consult with them early in the process to discuss ways they could be involved, and establish which officers are appropriate and available in the school’s area. This will include the police education officer and maybe other staff, such as road policing officers, community constables and iwi liaison officers.
Other community members
An ideal way to make sure the ideas and concerns of local community groups are considered is to include representatives from these groups in the travel plan working group.
Other groups
There are a number of other groups that could also be involved in the school travel plan. These include health agencies such as the Heart Foundation and Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC).
These groups don’t need to be consulted when identifying problems or issues, but consulting with them at the beginning of the project (and on the draft action plan) will encourage collaboration, consistency and information sharing among projects.
2.3 Action planning phase
2.3.1 Overview
Table 7: How to generate actions to address identified transport issues and establish action plans
| Objectives |
|---|
The objectives of the action planning phase are to:
|
| Steps |
1 Bring together the working group, and identify roles and responsibilities (formalise commitment). |
| Important theme |
The quality of the action plan will depend on the level of participation of the working group. The programme is designed with collaboration as a key component and its success relies on full participation from the relevant groups. The coordinator is likely to need to monitor participation levels and intervene where necessary to ensure full involvement. |
| Indicative timeframe |
In New Zealand, coordinators have found that the working group usually needs to meet two to four times over a period of a couple of months to discuss the data and develop an action plan. This may take longer if issues or solutions require further technical input or are more complex. |
| Completing the action planning phase |
The coordinator has completed the action planning phase when the wider school community has been informed of the content of the approved action plan, and actions have been signed off in the written travel plan document by the stakeholder responsible for their implementation. |
2.3.2 Steps
1 Bring together the working group
It’s the coordinator’s role to bring together the working group members and clarify the group’s purpose and an agreed way of working together.
How well the working group functions is key to the school travel plan’s success. It becomes the primary vehicle to ensure the issues identified are translated into appropriate solutions that are agreed and implemented.
Working group membership need not be fixed, as it may be useful to bring in specialist input at various points.
The groundwork for the formation of the working group will have taken place by this time. Key stakeholder groups will be clear about the overall programme design, and the respective roles and responsibilities of each group involved.
A typical working group has about six members and is likely to include:
- the school travel plan coordinator
- the lead teacher/school liaison staff member (and/or principal)
- board representatives
- the police education officer – likely to be limited to one or two meetings
- a traffic engineer (from the local council) – likely to be limited to one or two meetings
- any other person the school deems appropriate (eg parent representative, student representative, road safety coordinator, parking enforcement officer, iwi representative, representatives of community groups).
Tip: it’s important for the coordinator to organise the working group meetings effectively. It helps to have a set agenda and circulate any necessary information before the meeting. It’s also important to keep the working group members happy – providing refreshments is a good idea (eg one working group held evening meetings and the coordinator provided dessert for the members).
Tasks
The working group's tasks are to:
- prioritise the travel and road safety issues faced by the school community, using the travel survey results, onsite assessment and other information
- devise an action plan focused on environmental change, education, promotion and sometimes enforcement strategies to address the identified issues
- ensure the agreed strategies are approved by relevant authorities (eg principal and board of trustees, and local council)
- ensure approved strategies are implemented
- update the school community regarding progress at appointed stages in the programme
- liaise between the working group and wider stakeholder groups as necessary throughout the programme.
Initial working group meeting
The initial meeting is particularly important and the coordinator needs to ensure a clear structure is in place to enable the group to function efficiently and effectively.
Some important points to cover are:
- clarifying the working group’s purpose
- setting up a schedule of meetings for the programme’s duration
- allocating administrative roles within the group (eg chair, note taker, and responsibility for circulating notes and reports)
- accountability to the group (eg expectations around attendance, reporting back, completing tasks, dealing with absences)
- setting up a working schedule for the group.
It’s worth documenting the working agreement carefully and ensuring everyone is on board. Summarise frequently to ensure everyone shares the same understanding of agreements made. If group members are absent from the initial meeting, meet with them as soon as possible and go over the detail carefully.
2 Formulate an action plan
The working group formulates the action plan by:
- reviewing the data report, results of any consultation and any coordinator recommendations
- reaching agreement on the priority issues
- exploring all possible solutions using engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and policy strategies (refer to chapter 3).
The action plan should be based on objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-limited (SMART). We suggest using headings that cover:
- the aims for each objective
- the actions required
- who is responsible for each action
- a time (estimated, if necessary) when each step will be completed
- sign-off by the appropriate stakeholder on each action.
The action plan is usually laid out in a table so it is easy to read and fits in all the information needed.
Table 8: Example of an action plan
| Aim – increase the proportion of children walking to school by 10 percent in the first year | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Objective |
Actions |
Stakeholders |
Timeframe |
Sign-off |
|
|
Repair footpath and prune trees on X road |
• Council |
By [year] |
• School |
|
Investigate installing a kea crossing on X road |
• Council |
By [year] |
• School |
|
|
Increase classroom road safety |
Introduce 10 minutes a week of road safety teaching into each class |
• School |
By [month] |
• School |
Assist students to walk safely |
Initiate a walking school bus from X road |
• School |
By [month] |
• School |
3 Seek feedback from the school community and stakeholders on the action plan
Once the working group has developed a draft action plan, it’s important to gain further buy-in and support from the whole school community and other stakeholders.
Generally, this step includes notifying the school community that a draft school travel plan is available and that the working group is keen to gain feedback before finally approving it. This period also allows the working group members to seek feedback from their respective organisations or other networks. (See the consultation step in the previous phase for ideas on undertaking consultation.)
Tip: creating a display using photos of key issues with a simple feedback mechanism (such as green sticky dots for agreement and red sticky dots for disagreement) is a simple but effective means of gaining feedback. Publicise the display and ideally run it during a school event, such as a parent–teacher evening to maximise participation. (See the case study on the Fruitvale Primary display boards for more information.)
At least four weeks is usually allotted for receiving feedback from the school community and other stakeholders. The working group then meets to finalise the school travel plan and begin implementation.
The working group needs to remain flexible about the proposed actions and be prepared to alter the draft plan based on feedback from the school community and other stakeholders, especially the local council. Failure to do this will jeopardise implementation.
Case study – Fruitvale Primary
Display boards at parent-teacher night
Sue Kendall, the travel plan coordinator for Fruitvale Primary in Waitakere City, came up with this idea to help assess support for its working group’s draft action plan among the local community and achieve further community buy-in.
With help from the road safety coordinator, Sue set up display boards in the library to coincide with parent–teacher interviews. The boards contained photos of particular issues alongside the suggested action the working group had developed for resolving each issue.
For example, near the school is a rundown and overgrown walkway through a local park. This arose in the school’s surveys as a significant deterrent to walking. The working group planned an action to lobby the council and have the path fixed and trees cut back. On the display boards was a photo of the path and description of the action suggested to fix it. Parents were then asked to place either a green (agree) or red (disagree) sticker underneath the action to show their view.
This exercise proved to be very useful at engaging the community and giving the coordinator a chance to chat to people face-to-face about travel issues. Sue also found, when people didn’t agree with a proposal, that there were always suggestions and many good ideas were received.
Parents at Fruitvale Primary place green (agree) or red
(disagree) stickers under possible actions to address travel
issues identified by the school travel plan working group.
4 Finalising the school travel plan, and communicating it to the school community and stakeholders
The working group should meet to finalise the action plan and compile the overall school travel plan. While the plan forms the body of the school travel plan, it is also useful to include background information and supporting materials (eg school policies, monitoring tools).
The school travel plan is then usually tabled at the next board meeting for approval, and subsequently circulated to appropriate stakeholders.
Tip: the school travel plan is a living document that will develop as implementation occurs. Once actions have been completed and targets reached, it will be important to update the school travel plan to ensure it remains relevant and useful.
Writing the school travel plan document
A school travel plan document can be detailed, or very simple and straightforward. We suggest the following information is included whichever approach you take.
Introduction:
- location and description of the school (possibly including maps)
- school catchment area and number of students
- school ethos and vision.
Body:
- policy background/why the school travel plan is necessary
- aims identified in the set-up phase
- expected benefits (including who will benefit and how)
- reference to school travel policies
- who is involved in the project (school, community and other stakeholders)
- survey and consultation results
- current travel patterns (local and any links with regional or national patterns)
- key issues and obstacles that have been identified.
Action plan:
- what the school is doing already
- what else the school community can do (action plan in table format)
- selected measures to be implemented (prioritised)
- safety considerations.
Monitoring and evaluation (see section 2.2.2):
- how the plan will progress and the changes to be monitored
- the targets and indicators to be evaluated
- the frequency of the monitoring
- how the changes will be reported.
Table 9: Local school example
| Issue |
|---|
Less than 30 percent of current students walk to school, including 40 percent of students who live within one kilometre of the school. Parents report that traffic fear (crossing a particular road) is the key reason for not walking their children to school. A site assessment has shown there are insufficient traffic gaps for children to cross at the uncontrolled crossing points during morning peak traffic. The council traffic engineer has indicated that at least one signalised crossing is possible if sufficient funds can be obtained in the next financial year. |
| Aim |
To increase the percentage of students walking to school to more than 50 percent after safe crossing points have been installed. |
| Objective |
60 percent of all children living within one kilometre of the school will walk to school by June 2008. Overall, more than 50 percent of all students will walk to school at least twice a week. |
| Performance indicators |
A hand count of students walking carried out for one week in February and June each year. |
| Actions |
1 Support the council to seek funds to install a signalised crossing. Contact the local police education officer, who may also support the application. |
| Steps |
1 Board writes a letter of support to the council regarding a signalised crossing. Principal to follow up progress with council each term. |
2.4 Implementation and monitoring phase
2.4.1 Overview
Table 10: How to implement the actions specified in the action plan and maintain the momentum of the school travel plan
| Objectives |
|---|
The objectives of the implementation and monitoring phase are to:
|
| Steps |
1 Launch action plan.
|
| Important themes |
Important themes include:
|
| Indicative timeframe |
The implementation and monitoring phase usually spans at least one year but may extend beyond this if major engineering measures are planned. The school travel plan should become embedded in the school culture and a dynamic part of the community, updated and modified to achieve continuous improvement. |
2.4.2 Steps
1 Launch action plan
Implementation begins with announcing or launching the school travel plan. Some schools choose to launch the plan to their community by holding an event. This is a good way to promote some of the planned initiatives and draw further attention to the issues. Representatives from the key stakeholders should be present, and parents, residents and other community or business members invited.
If a school wishes to launch the school travel plan, consider these ideas:
- Encourage maximum participation at the launch by holding it during a regular assembly.
- Involve students in the launch by organising a performance of a transport-related skit.
- Invite VIP guests, such as the mayor, to make a short presentation that will add further weight to the plan.
- Get key stakeholders to sign the plan at the launch. This is a good way of ensuring ownership and formalising the agreement between the parties that the actions outlined will be implemented.
Some schools simply announce the commencement of the school travel plan through the school newsletter or a special flyer. Either way, it’s important to generate ongoing publicity about the progress of the plan. Some examples include:
- school assemblies
- school newsletters
- PTA meetings
- school open days
- the school’s website
- community noticeboards
- leaflets or letters sent to residents
- local free newspapers
- media statements sent to larger newspapers and radio stations.
2 Implement engineering, education, enforcement, encouragement and school policy strategies
This part of the programme marks the period when the bulk of strategy implementation takes place. The activity undertaken will depend on the nature of the issues identified and the education, engineering, enforcement, encouragement and policy strategies chosen to address the problems.
The coordinator is likely to have a range of tasks, eg:
- overseeing the implementation process
- undertaking tasks allocated in the action plan
- convening the ongoing meetings of the working group
- reviewing and updating the action plan with the working group at regular intervals
- ensuring all stakeholder groups are updated on programme progress, as necessary
- identifying and removing obstacles to programme implementation
- organising milestone celebrations in conjunction with the working group.
Implementing travel plan measures may take longer than set out in the action plan. This is particularly true for measures that require input from other groups, such as councils, or higher-level permission from the school board. Don’t be discouraged if things aren’t going according to the timing set out in the action plan but do update the action plan when timeframes change.
Tip: some measures should be implemented immediately after the travel plan is finalised to maintain impetus. However, it’s important to remember that safety is the key consideration of any school travel plan. Actions should be implemented in the order necessary to ensure travel is safe. For example, it isn’t appropriate to encourage walking to school along routes requiring engineering treatment to make them safe. Identifying safe routes and then encouraging children to walk with their parents, or on a walking school bus, is one way of getting children active before the action plan is completed.
The working group will need to meet regularly (usually at least once a term and maybe more frequently in the initial stages) to monitor progress. This is also a good time to discuss and solve any problems that have arisen with particular measures.
Celebrating or marking milestones in the implementation process can be a useful way of maintaining the plan’s profile and recognising people’s input. Such celebrations may be large or small, eg:
- a notice in the school newsletter announcing completion of a task
- a morning tea for the working group
- an article in a community newspaper
- a special school event
- a large event involving a cluster of schools, local celebrities and/or dignitaries and media.
3 Review the travel plan
It’s likely that, at this stage of implementation, most strategies are well underway and the working group meetings will be less frequent. In some instances, the working group may have ceased to meet. However, we recommend that some or all of the working group continue to meet two to four times a year throughout the life of the travel plan to maintain focus and momentum.
The review will generally occur yearly and will involve the coordinator (with the support of the working group) to ensure that:
- any loose ends can be identified and properly attended to
- a plan is in place for completing any strategies that haven’t been implemented (eg major engineering works)
- annual travel surveys are carried out
- there is a clear plan in place for the continued implementation of ongoing strategies (eg annual education of children on the correct use of a crossing facility)
- any future role for the coordinator is clarified (eg monitoring beyond the first year).
Initial travel survey techniques, such as surveys and hand counts during the data collection phase, need to be repeated to assess the shift to walking/cycling and any new sustainable transport issues. These methods need to collect essentially the same data without being too time consuming or resource intensive.
If there is no shift towards sustainable transport options at this point, the coordinator and working group need to determine reasons for this and address the key issues.
As part of the review, the coordinator and working group should prepare a short progress report highlighting achievements, outstanding issues and plans to resolve these, and outline actions for the year. This report can be made available to the school community and other stakeholders.
It is often appropriate at this point to celebrate and publicise successes.
4 Continue or adjust implementation
The travel plan should be a fluid document that adapts according to changes in travel issues and patterns.
A record should be kept of all actions. Note how each initiative has helped (or failed) to achieve the aims and objectives of the plan. This will help in identifying best practice for future use.
If the evaluation has identified areas where no change has occurred, then the related school policies and measures need to be revised.
For example, if new parking controls at the school gate haven’t decreased the number of cars parking illegally (and dangerously) during pick-up and drop-off times, parking policies need to be revised (eg a new policy could be instigated where the council is notified of illegally parked cars and owners receive a ticket).
5 Ongoing monitoring
Ongoing monitoring usually needs to be handed over to the school and council once the major work of the working group is completed. In some cases, the school travel plan coordinator will continue overseeing this role.
Monitoring is likely to focus on the issues addressed in the action plan, any incomplete or ongoing strategies, and the resulting shift towards sustainable transport options (identified through ongoing surveying of students). It may also extend to new issues that have arisen.
The form that monitoring takes will depend on the nature of the community and issues involved. If the project is part of a larger council programme, there will be specific tasks attached to that programme to consider. Requirements of the national monitoring database (ie providing data from survey results) will also need to be met annually. More information will be made available as the monitoring database is developed.
Low-key monitoring
This is appropriate when the action plan has been implemented smoothly and the impact has been high. For example, it may be agreed that the coordinator or another council staff member contacts the school every six months and talks with or meets with the principal and/or the lead teacher/liaison staff member. It may also be useful to maintain six-monthly contact with other key members of the working group, eg the council traffic engineer or road safety coordinator.
More intensive monitoring
This is appropriate where there have been problems with implementation, or where the school is in an area of high development or rapid change. It may be agreed that the coordinator takes a more active monitoring role. This can be done by a variety of methods, eg:
- a meeting with the principal and lead teacher/liaison staff member
- a meeting with other key members of the working group
- interviewing some of the key stakeholders
- onsite assessment of previous trouble spots.
It may be necessary for the coordinator to intervene where problems become evident. In this case, the working group members will be an important resource in resolving issues.
Tip: providing the school with an updated list of relevant contact names and telephone numbers can be a useful reminder to school staff of the community resources available.
At this stage, some coordinators may be focusing on helping the school utilise the contacts and skills learned through the intensive phases of the programme to resolve any new problems. In this situation, the coordinator takes on more of a coaching and supporting role for school staff or parents, rather than intervening directly.
Page created: 21 August 2008