Every morning, families make a quick decision: how to get to school. And even when students live close enough to walk or bike, a surprising number still arrive by car.
So what's actually driving that choice — and what helps change it?
A recent peer-reviewed study in Transport Reviews (2026) synthesised findings from 149 studies spanning data from nearly half a million children across the globe. The conclusion is both humbling and clarifying: active school travel isn't a knowledge problem, or even purely an infrastructure problem. It's a behaviour problem.
It's not just about skills 🚲
A common instinct is to start with training: teach kids to ride safely, and they'll ride to school.
That's partly right — but only partly.
The research shows that skills training builds confidence and ability, but doesn't consistently lead to lasting behaviour change on its own. And when you think about it, that makes sense. You can have a confident, capable young rider, but if their parents aren't comfortable letting them go, or there's no routine nudging the habit along, it simply won't happen.
Especially for younger children, parents are effectively the decision-makers. Their perception of safety, convenience, and — crucially — what feels normal plays a huge role.
Capability is essential. But it's not enough on its own.
Behaviour is shaped by a system
One of the more useful frameworks to come out of the research is this: school travel sits within a wider system of influences. Individual factors (skills, confidence), social factors (parents, peers, norms), and environmental factors (distance, traffic, infrastructure) all interact. If any one of these creates real friction, the behaviour becomes unlikely.
This is why single interventions — no matter how well designed — often fall short. You don't just need one lever. You need alignment across the system.
This kind of systems thinking is part of what informs how we approach behaviour change at Love to Ride. Our schools platform addresses several of these layers — making participation social, visible, and easy to start. And through our work with transport planners, we can contribute to the environmental layer too — though shifting infrastructure is a longer game, and we'd never pretend otherwise.
The real challenge: from "could" to "does"
Here's the uncomfortable truth. Many students are already in a position where they could walk or bike — they live close enough, they have access to a bike, they have the skills. They just... don't.
The 2026 Transport Reviews study found that on average, children walked a mean distance of 1.0 km (around 14 minutes) and cycled 2.7 km (around 13 minutes) to school — suggesting a practical threshold for where active travel is genuinely viable for most kids. ScienceDirect
That means distance isn't always the barrier. Habit is.
Common blockers include parental concerns about road safety, family routines built around convenience, and a quiet assumption that "this isn't what people like us do." These aren't solved by more information — they're solved by experience, repetition, and social proof.
Why "baby steps" matter 👣
One of the most consistent findings across the research is simple: start small.
Instead of aiming for "bike every day," the evidence points toward lower-friction entry points:
- Try one day a week
- Ride part of the journey
- Join a group ride or organised event
This dramatically lowers the barrier to action. And once someone starts, momentum builds.
That's the logic behind Love to Ride's challenges. Browse the student challenges — they're built around exactly this principle: make the first step easy enough that there's no good reason not to try.
Moments spark change. Habits sustain it.
Walk to school days, bike training sessions, themed events — these are powerful. They create a moment. They shift perception. They give people a first-hand experience they can't get from a poster.
But behaviour change doesn't stick without repetition.
One ride changes perception. Repeated rides create habits.
Reviewing the evidence, researchers have noted that it may take time for interventions to have an effect on children's travel behaviour — and that follow-up of at least two years is recommended to see whether changes are sustained. PubMed Central
That's not a discouraging finding — it's a design principle.
It's part of why Love to Ride's student challenges run for a month at a time rather than a single day. A month is long enough for a new behaviour to start feeling normal. And we recommend schools run at least a couple of challenges a year — because a second challenge reinforces what the first one started. Sustained encouragement, visible progress, and regular reinforcement aren't nice-to-haves. They're what turns a moment into a behaviour change.
Social norms: the hidden driver
One of the strongest influences on behaviour is something that rarely shows up in programme evaluations: what feels normal.
Research consistently shows that parents' attitudes toward active school travel are shaped by perceived peer support and social norms — when parents receive positive signals from other parents about letting their children travel actively, it positively influences their own attitudes. Systematic Reviews
In other words: visibility breeds permission.
Students are more likely to walk or bike if they see classmates doing it. Parents are more likely to allow it if other parents are doing the same. This creates a feedback loop — more visibility → more acceptance → more participation.
At scale, this is how culture shifts. It's part of why class participation and shared progress matter on our platform — not for competition's sake, but because social visibility is a genuine behaviour change mechanism.
Love to Ride Schools Leaderboard - scoped to classes only.
Short trips = big opportunity
Distance is one of the biggest predictors of whether a child actively travels to school. But it's also where the biggest opportunity sits. Short trips are easier to change, lower risk for parents, and quicker to build confidence around.
The 2026 review found that active school transport declines as distance increases — but that 14 minutes emerges as a consistent average travel time across both walking and cycling. ScienceDirect
For many families, that's genuinely achievable. The question is just whether the habit has formed yet.
Even one short active trip a week can begin to reshape routines. Small and consistent beats ambitious and occasional.
What actually drives behaviour change?
Across the research — and in our own work globally — a consistent pattern keeps emerging. People are more likely to adopt active travel when:
✅ The behaviour feels easy (low barrier to entry)
✅ It's social and visible (norms in action)
✅ They actually try it (experience shifts perception more than information does)
✅ They repeat it (habit formation takes time)
✅ Their specific barriers are addressed, not just the average ones
✅ It's fun!
Incentives and information alone aren't enough. Behaviour is more layered than that.
Where Love to Ride fits in
Where Love to Ride fits in
This is the gap Love to Ride was built to help fill — not single-handedly, but as a meaningful part of the picture.
Our schools platform gives schools the framework and the opportunity to make active travel feel like a normal part of school life:
- Lower the barrier to entry — small goals, easy starts
- A structured prompt — a challenge gives the whole class a reason to ride at the same time
- Social and visible — class participation and shared progress
- No heavy lifting — everything schools need to run a challenge, already built
- Show your impact — real data on rides and participation to share with stakeholders
Across our programmes broadly, around 40% of new riders go on to ride weekly — and that shift tends to stick.
For local authorities and transport planners thinking about the bigger picture — the infrastructure, the routes, the environments that make active travel feel safe — our planning and engagement work sits alongside the schools programme. We can't build a cycle lane, but we can help make the case, engage communities, and turn good infrastructure into genuine behaviour change.
What this means for schools
The shift in framing is subtle, but it matters.
Instead of asking "how do we get more students to bike to school?", the more effective question is: "how do we make active travel easy, normal, and repeatable?"
In practice that might mean encouraging just one trip a week. Focusing on class participation rather than individual commitment. Bringing parents into the conversation rather than working around them. And building in reinforcement over time — not just a one-off event.
If you're a school thinking about this, explore Love to Ride for schools or take a look at the student challenges platform to see how other schools are running it.
If you're a local authority or transport planner, find out how we work with planners →
A final thought 🌱
Most students already have what it takes to walk or bike to school.
What's often missing isn't ability. It's the habit — and the right support at the right moment.
The good news? Habits can be built. And the benefits go beyond fitness — kids who travel independently tend to be more confident, and communities with more people on foot and bike are just nicer places to be.
Curious how this could work in your area? Explore Love to Ride for schools →
Working at a local authority or planning level? Talk to us about engagement and behaviour change →
Trying to move the needle on mode shift? See how we work with active travel teams →