Over the past 20 years, parents have increasingly opted to drive their kids to school, often creating a safety risk and adding to the chaos on city streets.
“When you jump in the car, parents have probably put out a few fires before that. Then in the car, there’s rushing and red lights and then arguments. This all adds to the aggression,” says Leslie Maxwell, school travel planning supervisor at Student Transportation Services (STP) of Waterloo Region.
“By the time you arrive at the school zone, it’s no wonder that poor decisions are made.
"We empathize with that, but we want everyone to recognize that we have to protect that space and put off those microaggressions a little longer.”
It's why the School Travel Planning (STP) team in Waterloo Region, wants to create more active ways for students to get to and from school.
With over 60,000 students living in the ‘walk zone’ in Waterloo Region, STP has two mandates, to encourage more families to use active school transportation, and to decrease traffic near schools.
STP works with its supervising organization, Student Transportation Services of Waterloo Region (STSWR), to support active transportation with a mission to “positively influence children’s lives by coordinating their safe and efficient movement between home and school in support of their educational journey.”
According to the STP team, Waterloo Region is a leader in active school travel because municipalities and school boards fund programming that makes it possible to offer a wide array of tools and resources.
“With the ‘car culture’ today it is important to have support from both school boards,” Maxwell said. We are a leader here in Ontario. Our school boards in Waterloo Region were the first to support this work.”
And the key is for school boards to collaborate with municipalities to make that change, she said.
“It is important for those two bodies to work together on this problem This is a problem that doesn’t just belong to the boards. It’s the intersection between the two."
We saw that collaboration happen earlier this year when the region committed to reducing the speed limit to 40 km/h on Myers Road near Moffat Creek Public School in Cambridge.
Now the plan is to work on creating a drop-off and pick up zone within school property to keep the flow of traffic moving on Myers Road where high traffic volumes, speed and school traffic led to demands for better safety measures after a student was struck while crossing the street last fall.
But even before that happened, there were calls for change.
“It’s not very walkable, with no sidewalks on Branchton Road. So, we have kids coming from one direction because they can’t come from across the street. That is a huge factor and one reason why we have additional traffic at that school. It is an ongoing problem along with other contributing factors, but we continue to work with the school,” said Maxwell.
With schools drawing the population into one place within a 15-minute period in the morning and then again in the afternoon, it's inevitable problems will happen, Maxwell adds, emphasizing the need for the boards to work together with municipalities to solve those problems.
STP's programs include Trailblazers, Drive-to-5, Walking School Bus, and Winter Walk Day.
The Trailblazers program trains student walking experts who walk preferred routes to school wearing class II safety vests.
The program provides greater visibility of active school commuters, provides a greater level of pedestrian skill knowledge on school routes, and highlights preferred routes to other students.
Drive-to-5 identifies safe and legal street parking a short distance away from the school to disperse congestion and leave school access points safer for children travelling on foot. This program is a stepping stone towards active travel for hesitant parents.
And Walking School Bus is an organized system of getting children to school on foot under the supervision of trained and screened adult volunteers.
For a second year, Winter Walk Day was promoted by both the Waterloo Catholic District School Board and the Waterloo Region District School Board and supported by municipal leaders and staff.
During the 2020-21 school year, 49 elementary schools implemented action plan items to promote and encourage school travel plans, four new schools received at least an initial assessment and most of those started at least one action plan item by the end of the school year.
There were 19 schools fully engaged in STP work, while many others completed an action item such as participation in celebration events.
All 49 schools received a certificate of participation in June 2021.
Although the past year was difficult in many due to the pandemic, according to the STP team, it still advanced school travel planning in Waterloo Region.
Maxwell said the STP team works with city planning departments when it comes to new schools being built.
“One of my suggestions is always to have four main access points from four different directions so that users can have capability and capacity to service kids from all four directions,” she said.
In Cambridge, four school zones were enhanced with various treatments to increase visibility and awareness. The STP team applied for grant funding to cover infrastructure costs and the launch of an event named, “Looking Out for Each Other.”
“Today, we hear from more schools in Cambridge, and many are asking for our support. And we’ve had some special projects happen like the ‘enhanced school zones project’ deployed last year and the response was fantastic,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell said that with more trails and connections that are walkable and bikeable to schools, the better.
Research shows that the most walkable communities are those built on a grid network because the user has a number of choices as to which way they want to go.
“That is helpful because the walker or cyclist might want to stop, grab a snack or pick up a friend. Having those multiple connections makes a difference," Maxwell said. "This social piece is huge and it is why people feel more comfortable using active travel. They feel more satisfied and fulfilled over jumping into a car."
