School Streets

Making the school run safer, less polluting and more active has always been a key priority for Walk Ride GM.

We continue to campaign to making the school run safer and for School Streets to be part of GM’s policy on home to school travel.

Road closed by 2 barriers for a School Street on a sunny day

In 2019 we set up our campaign to ‘civilize the school run‘ and encourage more kids to walk, scoot or cycle to school.

In May 2022, we wrote a blog setting out our position on School Streets. We considered it vital that we make young people a more central part of the Bee Network story.

We also worked closely with a school in Whalley Range in Manchester, supporting them with their school street. You can find out more about our evaluation. You can also see the film we made about our experience.

Since then, progress has been made at both a Manchester and Greater Manchester level. We are happy to see active travel to school as a priority in the refreshed GM Active Travel Mission, with the ambition to deliver a new 2024 plan for home to school travel that reduces the number of children being driven less than 2km to their school.

Here’s what we’re asking our GM councils to do:

  • More School Streets, where feasible and faster rollout
  • More support to schools to encourage active travel to school
  • Camera enforcement of School Streets, not volunteers through use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to automate enforcement once these powers come into effect (It pays for itself within a year)

That’s why we are calling on GM to develop a longer term, more sustainable solution which does not rely on volunteers for enforcement. We urge each district council to make use of its new powers for enforcing moving traffic offences.

We welcome Dame Sarah Storey’s view that School Streets should act as a focal point for Active Neighbourhoods and cameras in place instead of volunteers for enforcement.

You can find more information here: