The Walking Bus is a group of children, walking to school with a couple of parent volunteers - a 'driver', who leads the way, and a 'conductor' at the rear. The walking bus follows a set route, stopping at agreed pick up points in the neighbourhood. Volunteers and children are kitted out with reflective clothing and a trolley can be used to carry bags. A number of safety checks are used in setting up schemes.

Also see:

Chicago's Walking School Bus Program
To further encourage walking, and to ensure the safety of students who do, the City of Chicago is launching a Walking School Bus program.

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School Surveys

Many possibliites here. Here's one to get you going:

• Young TransNet School Travel Survey

Also see:

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A School Program (for smaller children)

A School Program describes a child-led project, tentatively entitled "Man and His Car - A Stormy Romance" in an earlier version which we initially developed and tested in Paris back in 1988. The current version is intended for age group 10 - 12.

The project sketches some ideas for a "school experience", consisting of ten steps and an overall time span of several weeks. This program is built around a series of class discussions, field trips, and the preparation of an exhibition of some 40 photos or other graphics, most of them in color and of small poster size (28 X 40 cm or 11 X 16", and all prepared by the children. The program also suggests some ideas for a final public sessions in which the children can have an opportunity to make their observations and ideas known to a much larger audience.

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A School Program (for older children)

Structure of the team: Our work team consisted of five year nine students and one teacher. The teacher didn't help much but he was there just to confirm things and occasionally throw in a really annoying suggestion. No offense Mr. Cranby.

Abstract:
Pedestrian and bicycle accidents and injuries are important to children of school age, and should form a key part of educational strategies to involve children understanding their risks. The transport context of Victorian pedestrian accidents is summarized in this paper. A competition using GIS (Global Information Systems) and an accident database was used to encourage self motivated interest, enquiry and learning process for school-age children. Significant motivation was generated in student teams, and good results were obtained in terms of safety explorations and understanding, involvement of a wider group of students, mastery of the GIS software, the supply and support a road accidents data, and understanding of a road environment. The winning team was composed of students in years 7 and 8 working in their own time and largely unsupervised.

You will find two Acrobat PDF files (see the Media page for direct access to the free reader for this if you do not already have it installed) under the Library, one a descriptive paper, the other a PowerPoint presentation of the results.

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Transport Lab

Transport Lab is at this point is no more than a sketch outline for a student transport project or a cycle of projects. However there are enough elements in hand such that an enterprising teacher and class will be able to make a magnificent job of it. The crux of the idea is that...

• The students and teacher will get together and for several weeks or possibly an entire semester carry out a cooperative multidisciplinary study of the transport environment of the class and its members.
• It will be, to put big words to it, a combined science, social science, arts module.
• The focus of the project will be the study and analysis of the transport environment in and around the school, including the trip to and from school, by above all the children themselves but also the teachers, school staff and others who come there on a regular basis.
• The children will be the investigators and the teacher their coach/co-investigator (including extending the study to her own daily transport habits and choices).

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