Active School Travel Index

Despite most students living within three miles of their school in Northern Ireland, few students choose to walk to school and almost none (1% of primary and 0% of post-primary) get there by cycling. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise, given the lack of safe routes designed with the younger members of our community in mind.

The recently launched Arup and RSUA report “Active School Travel Index” looks to tackle this problem and improve how children access all schools across Northern Ireland by developing a specialised digital tool which maps, analyses and compares access to schools via available active travel infrastructure. The tool will allow Arup to rank schools through a range of quantitative and qualitative indicators and visualise results in an online dashboard, clearly identifying where targeted investment is required to improve infrastructure connectivity through ‘child friendly’ design. 

Improving the active travel options for schoolchildren will have wide-reaching benefits. Increasing daily activity improves mental and physical health, and shifting people out of their cars will improve air quality, reduce emissions, free up congestion and reduce the number of crashes. Most importantly, the Index aims to get more children to school cheaply, healthily and safely.