Engaging young minds. Addressing school travel challenges through innovation.

School trips are particularly suitable to utilising alternatives to the car. However, on an average school day more than one in five cars on the road during peak hour in Perth are involved in ferrying children to school. In WA the Department of Transport has been piloting a new approach to turn this around. Programs targeting school travel can be effective at directly reducing the number of car trips to school and can lay the foundation for less car intensive lifestyles in the future. Often approaches have focused on in-class lessons or the creation of a travel plan without much consideration of how the school community will be engaged or how that engagement will be sustained. In 2010 the Department piloted a new approach, partnering with 10 primary schools and 6 local government partners. The new model takes a holistic and school-centric approach to school travel. It incorporates a suite of travel based activities that are designed to engage and empower the school community to embrace active transport options for school travel. Fundamental design elements include: • A whole school approach • Building a working group or ‘Travelsmart team’ consisting of students, parents and teachers to implement the program within the school • Partnering with local government to provide hands on day to day facilitation of the program • Integrating classroom activities to the broader program • Maintaining motivation, engagement, data collection and communication • Engaging schools over a 2 year period Results to date are mixed: there is evidence that show the approach can be effective at maintaining engagement of the broader school community, integration of successful travel behaviour change strategies into school practices and achieving a reduction in car trips over the school year, however only a small sample of the original pilot schools remain involved.