How many students cycle to school?
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How students travel to school
It sounds shocking to those with rosy memories of their school days, but only a very small proportion of school children use a bicycle today as their main means of getting to school.
In Melbourne, just 2.7% of primary school children and 2.7% of secondary school children ride to school. It’s as high as 5.8% among inner city secondary students and as low as 2% of outer suburban primary school children, but there’s no getting away from the fact that bicycles aren’t a popular choice.
This information comes from the Victorian Department of Transport’s VISTA data base, which surveyed thousands of Victorians (including more than 10,000 Melburnians) in 2009-10 on where, when and how they travelled. It’s by far the most reliable and comprehensive source of data available on the travel patterns of Victorians.
There are many reasons why cycling numbers are low, including variable weather, security and parental concerns about road safety. Some cycling advocates think the mandatory helmet law introduced circa 1990 continues to be a major deterrent.
Another reason is parents and schools won’t let children in prep and early grades cycle unaccompanied even on dedicated paths. So the 2.7% figure for primary schools isn’t as bad as it looks – in particular, it understates the level of cycling in grades five and six.
From an ‘active transport’ point of view however, the news isn’t all bad. Compared to cycling, many more children either walk or use public transport as their main means of getting to school.
In fact getting on for a third of primary schoolers of all ages (31.3%) and a clear majority of secondary students (55.5%) use an active transport mode i.e. cycling, walking or public transport. All of these journeys avoid the use of a car and give children exercise.
As long as children aren’t being driven, it’s just as desirable for them to walk or take public transport as it is to cycle. All three modes deliver comparable benefits for the child and for the broader society. Cycling is of course particularly important if those other options aren’t available, but it’s not somehow intrinsically superior to them.
The key objective should be to increase the proportion of children who get to school by active modes rather than by car. It has to be acknowledged that there’s a considerable degree of car-pooling on the school run that often goes unacknowledged, but even so most car trips are chauffering single children.
In the case of primary school children, where car use is highest, the most promising alternative is walking. It doesn’t require specialised equipment, skills or infrastructure and is less daunting to parents than cycling.
Bicycles should have a role in helping to wean parents and children off cars for school journeys but let’s keep it in perspective. We should be agnostic about the choice of (active) mode.
I wonder if we have inflated and unreasonable expectations of school cycling based on a false view of the past. Apparently nearly four times as many children are being driven to school now as was the case in 1970, but it doesn’t follow that the change came at the expense of cycling – I expect it mostly replaced walking. We seem to have a real problem in getting reliable data on the ‘good old days’.
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Are there any areas in Australia that have a suburb wide network of bicycle paths? It would be interesting to compare those areas against the average for kids riding to school. I went to primary school in the late 70′s and early 80′s and it was rare that kids were driven to school where I lived. The most common form of transport was definitely walking, although bike riding was a much more common past time and there were a lot less cars on the road with many families only owning one car. I also remember quite a lot of elderly neighbours without cars. It would be interesting to see figures on the change in car use by 70 year olds.
Cycling is an especially important active transport mode for school students for this reason. If they don’t ride to school then they don’t ride bikes in general and so then the car is more often used. This is the case in our house at least.
My teenage daughters (who specifically don’t ride to school because of MHL- hair is the issue) have never been used to riding a bike. It is never their idea to go by bike, always mine. I’m sure that if they rode to school regularly then cycling to other destinations would not require an extraordinary decision, just due to the familiarity factor.
So out comes the car to destinations a bike would have been used for in the good old days, without doubt.
Griffith Uni’s Urban Research Program has done some useful work in this area; please see: http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/48573/urp-rp04-ridgewell-et-al-2005.pdf
This showed relatively low rates of walking and cycling to school at Forest Lake, a comprehensively planned new community with an extensive path system. Urban design is apparently less significant than concerns about children’s security (fear of assault) and safety (fear of children being hit by cars).
That’s interesting. Maybe urban design can have an impact on parental concerns about safety. There is no doubt a critical mass factor that would reinforce the social norm of walking and cycling and increase parental confidence about safety. It’s hard to pin down some of these factors, but my wife has twice been intimidated by strangers walking the kids to school, and this is in a “nice” suburb, but of course there is hardly anyone walking at anytime of day, except it seems for people whose cars are temporally unavailable and people with nothing better to do.
Parker ALan • OAM
In 2010 in Melbourne SD, only 2.7% of secondary school children rode to school. ( VISTA 2009/10) That means a big increase of unfit, overweight and obese children. Because Mummy has been driving them to school. Since 1987 when 30,000 students cycled to secondary school (11.5 %) and that 8.8% fewer students getting exercise by cycling to school.
That 1987 data is very reliable because the Ministry of Transport (MTA) Bicycle Coordinator Doug Bell surveyed a massive 260,000 students at 424 Melbourne secondary schools to found out how they got to school.The survey showed that 3 times as many boys than girls. Only 4.6% girls and 15.1% of boys. It is reasonable to suggest that the
In 7 bayside suburbs 20% or more cycled to school: in 15 outer suburbs between 10% and 20% cycled to school, and in 13 suburbs between 5% and 10% cycles to school. The very low 0% to 5% figures where in the inner Suburbs and NW suburbs .
The number cycle trips to school was very high in some LGAs
———————————————————————————-
Sandringham 48%
Chelsea 41%.
Moorabbin 27%.
Frankstan 26%.
Brighten 23%.
Moordialloc and Springvale 20%.
An earlier study in 1981 provides data showing that secondary students where become less fit as a consequence in 1987.
Data of primary school students riding is of less concern because there are five times as many primary schools which are much nearer to students homes and and most are within walking distance. Indeed some schools have “Walking Buses”, that is supervised walks to primary schools by 1987
Parker, A, A .(1988). “More woman riders in the nineties” 8 pages 11 figures. No 52 Special Summer december 1988. Freewheeling.
On website http://alanparker-pest.org/
Parker, A, A .(1988) “Cycling to School in Melbourne”, Freewheeling. No 50 July-August 1988 Freewheeling. 3 pages and 7 figures. Not on website Send me an email and address for hard copy.
G for George is right – perceived fears about child security is the problem. I say perceived because I doubt the actual rate of crime per person is any higher now than in the past. There were several notorious cases of kids being snatched from the street in the 1950s and 60s, but somehow we didn’t let it affect us as much. I can recall in primary school our class being lectured not to approach strangers as we (mostly all) walked to school.
The provision of cycle paths does not explain the decline of walking. I walked over a kilometre to and from primary school starting from grade one in the 1960s. That was common then; I met other classmates on the way. Later travelling to high school I walked a km to and from a train station. Now that would be exceedingly rare.
In town planning terms, one trend that does not help is the tendency of cash strapped State governments to close or merge small schools into a smaller number of larger schools, each requiring students to travel further. This must reduce the likelihood of students walking or cycling.
As I guessed on the previous thread, I suspect secondary students are travelling further to school than in 1970. Fifty percent of high school students now go to private schools and I’ll bet many of them are being driven across suburbs to get to those schools.
Are kids too time constrained these days for public transport? They have band practice, or sports training, and part-time jobs – if you need to be at school at 7.45 for something or other, there won’t be enough time for public transport. We were driven to school (in the 50s and 60s) but caught the bus home, just because the mornings were too rushed to allow time to wait for the bus.
It might even be cheaper if your Dad or Mum is driving that way on their way to work (in the olden days Dad probably caught the bus himself)
Boscombe, all good points for mine. I’d add that with much higher female participation in the labourforce, and often with both parents using cars to get to work, it makes good sense for one or other parent to drop children at school en route. Two cars head off in the morning and the parents expect their children to walk/cycle? Not likely.
I am not sure how true it is as I haven’t had time to chase it up, but I was told recently that at Laurimar Primary School (http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.584922,145.128858&z=16&t=k&nmd=20120328), a new school on Melbourne’s northern fringe, something like 90% of year 5 and 6 pupils walk or cycle to school.
I understand the school has a very strong active transport program, even going the extent of having an induction program for new familes. The suburb growing up around it has extensive off- and on-road paths and little true through traffic.
If this is correct, it would clearly demonstrate that good infrastructure and a strong advocay & support program could really lead to changed behaviours.
Krammer56:
I found the same thing when I was reading those ancient before and after studies on the impact of the mandatory helmet law in NSW in the early 90s. The authors noted some schools had much higher helmet wearing and cycling rates prior to the law than other schools – it came down to the policies of individual schools. It’s one reason why caution is needed in extrapolating from a small number of schools to all schools. AD
Not sure about the Laurimar numbers, but if correct, it suggests that software might be more important than hardware: there are a number of new communities that have had success with ‘walking school buses’ and ‘cycle trains’, etc. More effort into encouraging behaviour change through these sorts of schemes would be a worthwhike complement to walking and cycling paths.
I live on a street with a primary school. In the morning and afternoon it is awash with cars (quite often large 4WDs) ducking in and out of parking spots as far as the eye can see. There are no pedestrian crossings linking the train station opposite my house, so teachers in hi-vis have to line up kids on the edge of the street before finding a gap to cross. There’s a 40km/h zone outside the school but all the other streets allow cars to travel at 50km/h. Everything about this environment favours the occupants of cars, whereas those on foot or bike are pretty much given the scraps. And we wonder why kids are not walking or riding to school these days.
Same. When I was at school in the ’80s I was either walking the ~2km to primary school from the nearest high school (where my mum was a teacher – so be driven to there by her and then walk), or later riding the ~12km from where we lived out of town.
I’m sure the issue of safety crossed their minds, even in a small country town, but they never gave the slightest indication they would prefer me not to walk/ride, even when I declared I would start riding the 12km into town along country roads (mostly 80km/h speed limit, but 100km/h for a couple of km) at the beginning of grade 7 (after getting a shiny new road bike for Christmas).
I’m sure this still goes on to a degree in the country, but I cannot imagine it happening much in the cities and larger towns anymore.
One thing not mentioned is the provision of suitable bicycle sheds. At my primary school, I can’t remember there were any – almost everybody walked (nobody had usable cars). At my secondary school, good bike sheds were provided. Alongside the building for about 120 yards, bicycles were stored about a foot apart – total 360. And I am fairly certain there were more spaces to bring it up to well over 500 spaces for about 620 to 660 boys. So I variously caught two buses, or bus plus tram plus walk (not often – the tram terminus was a fair way away), and on the way home it was run to the station to catch the train then bus, or cycle, or walk the entire 3 1/2 miles. But the provision of so many cycle spaces, covered against rain, meant that cycling was a very reasonable option.Slightly down hill most of the way going, could be cycled in about 15 minutes, but at least 35 coming home. Walking about 50 minutes.
Now, how many schools have spaces for parking bikes, let alone covered spaces. There is nothing like sitting on a wet and soggy saddle to put you off cycling) And of course, no helmets.
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