A subdivision in South London has a playground where only the richest kids can play.

How to improve road safety near schools? How to make children healthier, healthier and happier by being active? How to increase the number of children who walk, head to school and bike to bike? How to prevent children from dying in the air invisible and polluted?

These questions are part of the reflections that cross the minds of many parents, teachers and policy makers – and us in Sustrans – regularly. There are many answers, but the most important when it comes to making sure that a happy and healthy child goes to school is to close the streets just outside of the school, at pick-up and pick-up times.

This is something we are doing with 40 schools to launch our annual "Big Pedal" competition for kids cycling, scooter and walking this week. This is the largest event of its kind in the UK and this year, a record number of more than 2,200 schools are participating.

Air pollution is linked to nearly 36,000 premature deaths in the UK each year and more than 2,200 schools and nurseries are near roads with damaging levels of motor emissions. With children's lungs still developing, roadside emissions make them particularly vulnerable. Public Health England has acknowledged, calling for a targeted reduction in traffic emissions and increased access to non-automotive traffic, such as cycles, and its use.

"School Streets", the process of closing streets outside of schools at pick-up and pick-up times, is a great way to reduce children's exposure to air pollution at school gates and on the streets. playground. The pollution from the exhaust pipes dissipates quickly, which means that distances of only a few meters can significantly reduce the exposure of children to pollutants. In the absence of cars idling on the outside of the doors and in the absence of congestion, the air is purer.

School-free streets reduce traffic

School Streets also reduces the traffic as a whole. In Edinburgh, where a pilot project of school streets went through nine elementary schools, the driving ban resulted in a significant drop in traffic. Interestingly, the traffic did not simply dissipate in the surrounding streets, which simply displaced the problem. Overall, only one third of the traffic has been moved to the surrounding roads. The other two-thirds of the car trips stopped completely.

By closing the streets outside a school, you are not only reducing the exposure of children to pollutants: you are reducing the dangers of the road by eliminating the interaction of children with cars outside the doors of the school. school. Safer streets mean more parents are happier to let their child walk or cycle to school. School streets effectively help parents who may think differently about how school works and how their child could get to school by making other forms of travel. more active, more practical and safer.

As part of the Big Pedal launch, Sustrans conducted a YouGov survey of 840 teachers in the UK and found that almost two-thirds (63%) of teachers support car-free streets outside schools. If so, the logical question to ask is why there are no more school streets, apart from Hackney in London and other pilots punctuated across the country.

The answers are complex. In the same survey, 36% of teachers said they needed more support from their parents and 27% needed the support of local authorities, who have the power to advance the streets of schools. It can be difficult to convince parents when car travel is often perceived as the most practical option. While local authorities can set up school streets, their ability to enforce them varies across the UK, and the cost of setting them up can to be a prohibitive factor.

This is why Sustrans calls on the UK governments to actively help local authorities to set up school streets, especially in England outside of London, where they do not have the power to enforce them. Larger scale investments in walking and cycling infrastructure are needed to really offer families an alternative to the car. Small localized actions of closing streets outside schools to cars when deployed to a country can really make a difference to the health and well-being of everyone.

Rachel White is Senior Policy and Policy Advisor with the Sustrans Transportation Charity Association.