About school streets

What are school streets?

A school street is an active travel initiative to create safer and healthier car free environments outside schools across the county.

The aim of a school street is to reduce school drop-off and pick-up traffic volumes by minimising the volume of motorised vehicles entering the road or roads outside a school during their busy morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up times.

A school street is developed by working in collaboration with schools, implementing additional active travel measures to support the increase in travelling to school by walking, wheeling, cycling, and scooting, whilst reducing car-use, and car-dependence.

A school street is implemented by Oxfordshire County Council using an experimental traffic regulation order (ETRO) followed by a traffic regulation order (TRO).

Benefits

The aim is to improve safety for vulnerable road users, improve air quality, encourage healthier school travel, and reduce traffic impacts on the school’s local community and residents by reducing traffic congestion and unsafe parking from parents/carers driving to the school gates.  

By creating a safer street environment, children can boost their confidence in walking/wheeling cycling, scooting or other active travel options without relying on a motor vehicle. The increase in physical activity levels can improve physical health and reduce obesity rates, whilst helping pupils to feel more energised in the mornings and more ready to focus on their studies. There is also the opportunity for parents/carers and children to socialise on the school run, boosting wellbeing and sense of community. 

School streets aims to: 

• reduce traffic congestion and inappropriate vehicle use
• open streets up to people walking, wheeling, cycling, and scooting 
• improve road safety  
• improve air quality
• provide opportunities to improve physical and mental health
• provide opportunities for children to travel to school together with their friends, which builds social skills  
• support children so they arrive at school, energised and ready to learn  
• teach children road safety and travel independence, increasing their travel confidence especially as they transition into secondary schools

Getting to a school without a car is now easier with a number of initiatives designed to make walking and cycling to school safer and more enjoyable, such as Footsteps (pdf format,1.3MB),  Park and Stride and Bikeability. There are also emerging projects including exploring how to support the transition from travelling from primary school to secondary school. 

Oxfordshire Council can support schools with creating a tailored travel to school action plan to meet the needs of their school community. This is an integral part of a school travel plan, which we develop on ModeshiftSTARS. 

Further information about getting to school without a car can be found here.

Background

The school streets programme is part of our countywide Local Transport and Connectivity Plan (LTCP) .  The Travel to School policy (Policy number 11, page 53) was approved at the council’s cabinet meeting on 21 June 2022. The Travel to School policy contributes to our vision to make  walking, cycling, public and shared transport the natural first choice for journeys, and supports our 2030 LTCP target of replacing or removing one out of every four current car trips in Oxfordshire. 

School Streets are also part of our Active Travel aims to support and encourage walking and cycling to improve people’s health and wellbeing. Further information on active travel can be found here. Our Active Travel Strategy (ATS) (pdf format, 455Kb) details our vision for walking and cycling in Oxfordshire, with our cycling target of increasing the number of cycling trips per week from 600,000 (current baseline) to one million by 2031.  

In line with our LTCP policies, we will encourage active travel and cycling to schools in a number of ways including: 

• Encouraging schools to provide adequate cycle parking.  
• Reviewing and improving cycle routes to school. 
• Providing Bikeability opportunities for all children.  
• Ensuring there are safe places for young children to learn to cycle.  
• Providing family cycle training so that parents feel confident cycling with their children.  
• Increasing the number of bike libraries in schools so that low income families are able to access equipment. 

In Oxfordshire, school streets were first launched in 2021 with a six-week trial at nine schools (set up under an experimental traffic regulation order - ETRO). The nine schools who took part in the school street trail were: 

• Bure Park Primary School – Bicester 
• East Oxford Primary School – Oxford 
• Larkrise Primary School – Oxford 
• St Christopher’s CE Primary School – Oxford 
• St Ebbe’s CE Primary School – Oxford 
• St Edburg’s CE Primary School – Bicester 
• St Nicolas CE Primary School – Abingdon 
• Tower Hill Primary School – Witney 
• Windmill Primary School – Oxford 

The school street trial was funded by the Department for Transport’s active travel initiative.

During the trial, volunteers operated temporary ‘pop-up’ gates at the school streets entry points, during the school’s drop-off and pick-up times. A lead steward, assisted by school/local volunteers managed and marshalled the school street entry points using the temporary ‘pop-up’ gates, including allowing access for residents and exempt vehicles. The volunteers were coordinated by local active travel groups: Sustrans, Liveable Streets and Active Oxfordshire. 

Following on the school street trial, four of the schools wanted to make their school streets permanent. There was a public consultation held between 13 July and 26 August 2022 asking for the public’s views, comments, and feedback on the proposal for the four schools to set up permanent school streets, enforced using ANPR Cameras.  

The consultation feedback was positive with 88% of responses supporting the permanent school street proposals. Cllr Andrew Gant, Cabinet Member for Highways Management approved the recommendation to make the four school streets permanent under Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) and enforced by ANPR cameras at a Cabinet meeting on 8 September 2022.

Implementation process

Building on the delivery of our phase one school streets in Oxfordshire, we are developing a school street process to help guide the implementation any future school streets. This will be a seven step school street process, which will start with exploring the geographical suitability of a school street, all the way through to the implementation of the permanent school street. 

1. Review of the school's location and road safety data to determine suitability and location of a potential School Street – OCC lead, agreed by school.
2. Develop the school's travel plan – OCC and school jointly working together. 
3. Plan for School Street trial (ETRO) – OCC and school jointly working together. 
4. School Street trial and review period– OCC, school volunteers and external stakeholders collaboration.  
5. Progressing to permanent School Street (TRO) – preparing consultation.  
6. Formal consultation of permanent School Street.  
7. Permanent School Street infrastructure implemented and ongoing monitoring. 

After a school street has been made permanent there will still be ongoing benefits monitoring required on an annual basis. 

Monitoring

Once a permanent school street has been installed, it will be monitored regularly to ensure it is still meeting its aims and delivering its expected benefits. These are some of the things our monitoring will typically include: 

• monitoring the air quality outside the school to check for air quality improvements
• traffic monitoring using diffusion tubes 
• monitoring how often active travel methods (such as walking/wheeling and cycling) on the school street are used, to identify the increases in active travel use 
• monitoring qualitative data (qualitative data is not numeric – and can be made up of evidence from things such as informal class surveys or student/carer feedback) from the schools, parents, and carers to ensure students are benefitting from the school street

We will share feedback on how well the school streets have worked through annual reviews. We will also engage with the schools, the wider school community, including parents/carers, residents and businesses, to ensure the school streets benefits continue.