How pairing a School Street with a school travel challenge can turn a traffic order into a moment families notice and remember.
At 8:40am, the road outside a school can be the worst possible advert for active travel. Cars idle at the kerb, parents circle for a space, and children squeeze along narrow pavements between bumpers. Nobody standing there would conclude that walking or cycling is the easy option.
Take most of the cars away and the same street tells a different story. There's room to walk side by side, bikes and scooters appear, and parents stop to talk. That change is what a School Street makes possible.
What a School Street is, and why it matters
The Department for Transport and Active Travel England guidance defines a School Street as a road outside a school where motor traffic is restricted at the start and end of the school day, covering anything from part of one road to several roads near the school. The restrictions generally run every weekday all year but you can trial via a pop-up. Residents, Blue Badge holders and emergency services are usually exempt.
The case for doing this is strong. Around 40% of primary pupils and 25% of secondary pupils in England are driven to school, a share that has climbed sharply since the mid-1970s. Guidance
The results from schemes already running are encouraging:
- Hackney: the borough's first four School Streets saw traffic fall by an average of 68%, cycling to school rise by 51%, and vehicle emissions outside the schools drop by 74%. TransportXtra
- Medway: after its first year, car trips during restricted hours dropped from 28% to around 10%, and walking trips rose from 68% to roughly 86%. Medway Committee Report
- Across the UK: a review by Edinburgh Napier University for the Road Safety Trust found that in nearly all cases, traffic fell across School Streets and neighbouring roads, active travel increased, most parents and residents backed the schemes, and displaced traffic caused no significant safety problems. Active Travel England
Let people experience it before you ask them to support it
A consultation letter asks residents to imagine a quieter street. A trial lets them stand in one.
At Fairfield Primary School in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan Council and Sustrans did exactly that. For a week in October 2021, the road outside the school was closed to traffic before pick-up so children could play, walk, wheel, cycle and scoot home safely. The trial also gave parents and residents a chance to experience the closure first-hand and ask questions about the scheme. Afterwards, 81% of residents on Dryden Road said they supported the School Street, and a timed closure began in May 2023 under an 18-month trial. Fairfield Primary School Results
Southampton followed a similar path at St Mary's CE Primary. After taking part in a national School Streets event in March 2019, the school closed its road again in July and November that year, using the space for scooter skills, skipping and ball games, before a trial restriction was introduced in February 2020. At the event, 90% of St Mary's respondents said the street felt more child-friendly and 97% supported another closure. St Mary's C of E Results
The national guidance supports this approach, noting that a road closure event can be a useful way to test an emerging layout, gather feedback and collect evidence.
Where a challenge fits
The guidance is clear that a School Street works best as part of a wider programme. It says schools selected for a scheme should normally already have a School Travel Plan and a track record of initiatives supporting sustainable travel. Among the ways it lists to build excitement about active travel are organised challenge events, school scooting and cycling clubs, and reward schemes for pupils who walk, wheel or cycle. For the launch itself, it suggests a street party or games morning in the first week, timed where possible to coincide with national moments such as Walk to School Week or Road Safety Week.
Birmingham shows what this joined-up approach can achieve. Woodthorpe Junior & Infant School joined the Car Free School Streets programme in 2020, already running a Junior PCSO scheme and a route audit with Living Streets. Car use there fell from 36% in 2019/20 to 9% in 2023/24. That result belongs to the whole programme, not the restriction alone, and that is exactly the point. Active Travel England
This is where Love to Ride Schools comes in. Classes record their walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting journeys together, schools can compete, and progress is visible to pupils and families.
Run alongside a School Street launch, a challenge gives families something to do in the newly quiet street. Children count their journeys, classes chase each other up the leaderboard, and the first week of the scheme becomes a celebration rather than just a change of rules.
Love to Ride can help you with your evidence, too
Monitoring is not optional. The guidance calls it essential and says baseline data should be planned early, before the scheme goes in. Changes in walking, wheeling and cycling can be measured through a simple mode of travel or hands-up survey. Active Travel England
A snapshot can be taken before the restriction starts and a challenge can launch in line with the pop-up and continue after it, giving you a regular record of how children and parents are travelling. It won't replace formal evaluation. The guidance itself notes that evaluation should account for any other interventions happening alongside the School Street, so the challenge should be declared as part of the package. But it does give you something to show at the six-month ETRO review, and something to share with residents and councillors.
Love to Ride Schools can also help with communication of the pop-up.
From one day to every day
You don't need to jump straight to a permanent, camera-enforced scheme. A practical sequence might look like this.
Baseline. Run Love to Ride Schools snapshot survey(s) to baseline existing travel habits.
Try it. Hold a one-day or one-week street event with games, bike and scooter activities, and the launch of a school travel challenge.
Test it. Introduce an experimental order, listen to residents, set up Park and Stride options, where possible, keep the challenge running so families have ongoing reasons to leave the car at home.
Make it normal. Move to a permanent scheme, supported by cycle training, secure parking, walking and bike buses, and better routes.
Keep it alive. Treat the School Street as the start of the school's travel culture rather than the end of an infrastructure project. Keep running snapshots and challenges, celebrate journeys, and use what families tell you to improve the routes around the school.
Planning a School Street?
If you're preparing a School Street launch or trial this year, we'd love to talk about running a Love to Ride Schools challenge alongside it. Find out more at partners.lovetoride.net/schools or email hello@lovetoride.net.
Sources
- Department for Transport and Active Travel England (2024), School Streets: how to set up and manage a scheme
- DfT/ATE case study, School Streets as part of a school travel programme: Birmingham City Council
- Welsh Government, School Streets: Fairfield Primary School
- Vale of Glamorgan Council (2023), School road closure planned to promote active forms of travel
- Hackney Council, Traffic to be banned outside 40 schools as part of emergency plan
- Medway Council, School Streets Tranche 1 monitoring report
- My Journey Southampton, St Mary's C of E Primary School: School Streets case study
- Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (Sustrans), St Mary's School Street: creating safer spaces for walking and cycling to school
- Love to Ride, Moving before the bell