Walk to School Conference DVD

You wait ages for a post, and then three come along at once...
The DVDs and CD-ROM from the Walk to School conference finally arrived on my desk this morning - it has taken far longer than I expected, but they are done now!

I hope to get them out early next week - I need to arrange a volunteer to come and stuff them into envelopes for us.

Thanks for your patience, I hope they are worth the wait (and yes, they do have the "too cool for school" video on them).

Robo-pop

I bought a copy of the Mirror today. Not a paper I usually buy, but there was an article about walking to school in it - which I had written the press release for.

My eye was drawn, however, by the story about lollypop people being armed with video cameras hidden in their lollypops as a way of catching abusive and threatening motorists.

I think this is a great idea. Having spoken to many lollipop people in my time (or school crossing patrols to give them their proper title) it is shocking how much abuse they face from impatient motorists. The figure of 1,400 "patrol rage" incidents seems, if anything, a bit on the low side in my experience.

What motorists don't seem to realise is the great job these people do - often for very little thanks (and certainly very little pay).

If nothing else, without school crossings there would either need to be more traffic lights (and road ragers don't want that) or there would be less people walking to school (because they don't feel safe) increasing the congestion on the road. Yes they may be in a hurry at the moment, but the alternatives are both (from the POV of the road rager) worse!

It is sad that these "robo-pops" are needed, but if it will help protect and support lollypop people, I am all for it.

See also:

This is London

BBC News website (with a short video clip)

The Department for Transport School Travel Statistics

Every year the Department for Transport (bless 'em) run the National Travel Survey. Until recently, this was the best source of data on how children travel to school (there is now a question in the school census).

There are good points and bad points to the methodology for both (both could be improved), but statistically they agree with each other - so the debate is immaterial.

The most recent National Travel Survey (2006 - they publish the results around Aug/Sept of the following year) is here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/personal/mainresults/nts2006/

This year, however, they have also produced a handy guide to all the stats you could ever want to know about travel to school specifically.
This can be found here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/personal/factsheets/school.pdf

It was published in March, but I have only just found it again. I have been referring to it ALOT recently, so I thought it was worth posting for others to make use of too!