Merseyside children in walk to school campaign

Oct 1 2007 by David Higgerson, Liverpool Daily Post

THOUSANDS of children at 350 schools across Merseyside will this week take part in a new campaign aimed at encouraging them to walk to school.

Organisers hope the region-wide project will lead to reduced road congestion at school-run times and also help tackle the area’s youth obesity crisis.

Parents and children at the schools will be encouraged to cut down on the car for school runs and take the healthier option of walking to school.

Even where distance makes a car journey necessary, parents are being asked to park five minutes’ walk away from their child’s school to both cut down on congestion at the school gates and to still fit in some exercise.

Pupils will also have diaries to keep a record of their walking activities for a week.

The week-long campaign follows the launch earlier this year of Walk to School Merseyside.

It is run by TravelWise, the campaign set up by the Merseyside Local Transport Partnership, the five Merseyside authorities and Merseytravel to help people find alternatives to the car.

Hundreds of schools are now receiving help to develop and implement travel plans and walking schemes like Walking Buses and other walking-related activities.

Schemes becoming common place across the area include walking days like Marching Mondays, Walking Wednesdays and Fresh Air Fridays, creating Park and Walk sites, Walking Pledges to encourage children to walk to school at least one day a week, and Walking Buddy schemes where children team up to walk to school.

Thousands of children are also receiving pedestrian training.

Some schools have received funding via TravelWise to help pay for everything from leaflets to promote walking schemes to high-visibility vests for walking buses or help with grants for physical changes to the school like benches for parents to rest on while waiting to walk home with their children.

Neil Scales, chairman of the Local Transport Partnership and chief executive of Merseytravel, said: “Walk to School week is one of the most important activities in the year in helping to encourage children and their parents to look at this healthier alternative for getting to school.

“It also relieves congestion at school gates and helps keep the air cleaner.”

Earlier this year, Mersey-side’s leading public health official, Dr Paula Grey, called on parents to stop using the car for the school run because it increased the risk of them making their children fat.

Around one in seven are obese at present, and Dr Grey, director of public health at Liverpool Primary Care Trust, said: “Parents could prolong their children’s lives and improve their general health by encouraging them to walk to school.

“Obesity levels in adults are often set when they are children so establishing good habits at an early age is vital for long-term health.

“Driving your child to school means they could become part of the one third of seriously overweight adults in Liverpool by 2020.”

davidhiggerson