Earlier this week the city released its Safe Journeys to School report. The mammoth 864-page study is meant to help find ways to minimize the risks of traffic injuries and collisions involving students.
Running the gamut of potential remedies, the study outlines everything from improving traffic flow and minimizing congestion around schools to better enforcement and driver education.
While the death of Thomas Wedman – a six-year-old who was hit by a school bus in 2013 – sparked the need to find solutions, the answer to the problem might be the opposite to what many think.
Study of St. Albert’s transportation choices indicate about 80 per cent of students are driven to school – 33 per cent by car, 47 per cent by bus – while the remaining 20 per cent walk or bike. The imbalance of the number of students using active transportation – biking or walking – to those in cars or buses demonstrates the potential hazard.
More vehicles stacking up to drive children to school creates congestion and leads to impatience, which in turn increases the potential for an accident. When the Gazette interviewed Marie Gamache-Hauptman, principal of Ecole Marie Poburan, she said safety improvements have been 98 per cent effective at the school in terms of parents following revised pickup and drop off protocols. However, she added, there are still two per cent of drivers who choose convenience over safety.
The safe journey report indicates a lot of potential hazards when it comes to bad choices by both drivers and pedestrians. Motorists failing to yield, speeding and jay walking for example, can lead to injury. But, a lot of the safety issues would likely be mitigated if there were fewer vehicles to interact with.
The best way to achieve that is to encourage changes that will get more students walking, biking or taking the bus, depending on the distance they have to travel to school. With nearly half of all trips to school measuring less than 2.5 kilometres this is an easily achievable goal. Improving bus routes for distances too far to walk and making busing more affordable or biking would also help reduce traffic.
Walking between one and two kilometres to school is not unreasonable. Biking slightly farther is also not an unrealistic expectation. And while the top reason for driving children to school, according to the report, was not safety but convenience, work needs to be done to get to the point that parents feel comfortable with that option.
Education and enforcement are the first logical steps. Teaching students how to travel safely and ensuring drivers are following the rules of the road and watching for pedestrians is essential. The second step is for the city to create an environment more conducive to walking. The report highlights areas that could help with that goal. One is mapping safe routes for students to travel. For the winter months, ensuring sidewalks are clear of ice and snow will make walking or biking easier on milder days.
For those who will always choose to drive their children to school, perhaps carpooling could become the norm. With the number of complaints about traffic and safety around schools it only makes sense that the best remedy is simply reducing the amount of traffic.
