We sent the below email to our MP Helen Hayes following the DfT's 28 September statistical release, ' Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain: 2016 Annual Report '. Dear Helen, Firstly, thank you for attending our meeting last month. We very much appreciated you joining us and for all your hard work in mediating between the many parties involved in current issues affecting local transport and travel. Unfortunately, I must now turn to a much less happy matter. I am writing to you in order to express the forum's grave concerns regarding the fact that pedestrian fatalities actually increased in 2016 and that 26% of these fatalities were children aged under 15. We especially wish to highlight the cases of Esme Williams and Georgia Addy, two of the school children killed or seriously injured in road traffic collisions last year. Esme was killed by a van driver whilst scooting to pre-school. Georgia suffered life changing injuries a...

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, published his draft transport strategy in June. You can read the strategy summary and full draft here . The consultation closed on October 2nd and SRS submitted the following comments: 1) London faces a number of growing challenges to the sustainability of its transport system. To re-examine the way people move about the city in the context of these challenges, it is important that they have been correctly identified.  We see the school run as having a huge impact on the morning and evening rush hours. We feel that at present parents don't have enough options available to them on how to get their children to school safely and on to work. Road traffic collisions remain the biggest cause of death for young people aged 11-18, with many of these deaths occurring during the evening rush hour, when they are returning from school. We believe safe walking and cycling routes to school should be a first step to tackling some of the issues around rush ho...

On Wednesday 21 June the iconic Herne Hill Velodrome hosted, on behalf of Dulwich & Herne Hill Safe Routes to School, an Early Years Sustainable Travel Event with support from Southwark Council. The event aimed to promote and encourage road safety and sustainable travel to Early Years’ families (under 5s). Eight schools and nurseries from the local area: Bessemer Grange Primary School, DUCKS, Dulwich Prep London, Dulwich Village C of E Infants’ School, Dulwich Wood Primary School, Herne Hill School, JAPS and Nelly’s Nursery, took part and their pupils had the opportunity to have balance bike, bike skills and pedestrian training. There were lots of other fun activities taking place; families brought their bikes for a safety check by Dr Bike, drank smoothies blended by the ‘smoothie bike’, made badges and coloured in travel related arts and crafts, as well as enjoying a performer who walked around entertaining the children. Parents who owned cargo bikes and tag along bikes were...

A version of this post first appeared in the Autumn 2017 edition of London Cyclist , the magazine of the London Cycling Campaign. Women and Cycling: The impact of the School Run Currently, the biggest killer of children aged 10-18 in the UK is road traffic incidents . Parental fears around road safety are not unfounded. If it isn’t safe for children to get to school independently, parents’ lives end up revolving around school pick-up and drop-off times, adding to stress levels in already busy lives.    Schools do need to do all they can to work with their communities to make their local areas safer for cycling.  I’m extremely fortunate to work supporting schools in Southwark; we have a fantastic school travel team, a supportive borough group and a council that is looking to develop its cycling infrastructure.  I’m also proud of the work of our Safer Routes forum and our collaborative achievements across the nineteen or so schools we represent. I would lo...

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted the chalk  messages and posters on Green Dale advertising the Ride South London information. Here are the details from their website:  Saturday 29th July  is the  Prudential RideLondon FreeCycle , now in its 5th year. It’s a unique chance to experience central London on two wheels without the noise, danger and pollution of motor traffic. The eight mile closed road loop takes in sights like Big Ben, St Paul’s Cathedral, the London Eye and views along the Embankment. There’ll be music, sights, food and fun – and the whole thing is free. But. Getting there from South London on a bike can seem pretty daunting to the uninitiated – especially if you’re travelling with kids in tow, or aren’t as nimble as you once were. It’s not all that far – even the outer reaches of our route are just seven or eight miles from the centre of town – but if you don’t know where you’re going, it can be a confusing tangle of busy main roads ...

Across Dulwich College’s five schools we made a dedicated effort in the second week in May to change the way we travelled to school, following the SUSTRANS blue print of ‘The Big Shift’ – an active shift towards more active and sustainable travel.  All staff and boys were asked to make a pledge to make a conscientious effort to change during that week.  It was recognised that many families couldn’t change their means and route to school (as they have to use the Foundation Coach Service or lived too far away) so they were equally valued if they managed to change their travel over their weekend.  The pledges for more sustainable and active travel have rolled in and lots of boys have walked and cycled to school over the course of this week (see pledge wall photo here). Such is the commitment that one boy, who lives very close to the school and who normally walks, said that he became more active by 'sprinting' to school instead. In addition to the pledges we ha...

June 15th is National Clean Air Day. Schools, communities, businesses and individuals can all take part.  Pledge to leave the car at home for the day to reduce the amount of pollution you create and join the movement. The website ( https://www.cleanairday.org.uk/ ) has free toolkits available for download that schools can use to encourage their pupils to make clean air pledges. The day is supported by various public health authorities across the country and is well worth getting involved in. We at SRS very much support all clean air initiatives, knowing how badly air pollution affects children's health. The link to the schools toolkit is here . Please do tweet us any images you have of school pledges made as part of #NationalCleanAirDay as we'd love to know what changes you'd make.

Amy and I attended a Public Policy Exchange Symposium on boosting cycling activity and improving safety on Thursday 16 March. Below, I have attempted to share a little of what we took away from the day. The morning commenced with an introduction for the Chair, Adrian Lloyd, who is Associate Director of Phil Jones Associates and has had over 20 years consultancy experience in developing strategies and infrastructure to encourage walking and cycling. Roger Geffen, Policy Director of Cycling UK was first to talk. He gave a brief outline of Cycling UK’s work and then went on to talk about attracting funding and support for local cycling. He gave details about the exiting Cycling Walking and Investment Strategy (CWIS) which is a Government strategy to create a walking and cycling nation through planning, investing and building infrastructure to generate a behaviour change with the ambition to normalize walking and cycling by 2040. He then went on to discuss the need for protected spac...

Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes to School would like to hold an Early Years Event on the afternoon of Wednesday 21 June from 1.30 to 3.30 pm, promoting road safety and sustainable travel to Early Years’ families (0-5 years). The Herne Hill Velodrome have kindly offered to host the event; a stunning venue, especially since its renovation and building of the new pavilion. The Velodrome already runs initiatives for very young children and has excellent coaches, bikes and resources.  The event planning is in the very early stages so all details will be confirmed after the Easter break. However, please pencil in the date for your Early Years’ pupils. There will be balance bike training, a bike obstacle course,  pedestrian training, Dr Bike and other activities taking place.  This event is being organised for the participation of local nurseries and primary schools but parents/carers and younger siblings are welcome to come along too.  If you would like further ...

As someone with a rather unloved front garden, I've loved watching Joe Swift  on 'The Great British Garden Revival' encouraging us all to cover the concrete with pots and planters and am keen to finally play my part in the RHS' ' Greening Grey Britain Campaign ', by digging up some paving slabs and finally being able to do something to make my street a little bit greener and a little bit more attractive. This did mean I was a little surprised (and rather annoyed!) to see an episode of 'Homes Under the Hammer' in which the advice, given several times, was to pave over the front of one of the properties to create space for a car to 'add value'. Is it really more valuable to turn our gardens into parking spaces? Can we be bold and say that paving over entire front gardens is making our streets look ugly, damaging our local environment and making pavements unsafe, all for the sake of personal convenience? We were fortunate enough to attend Southw...

This weekend saw 2017's Landor Links ' Sustainable Transport and Public Health ' summit in Bristol which I attended on behalf of the SRS forum. My arrival in Bristol coincided with Storm Doris' and the city tour, led by Jessica Read (an engineer and urban planner working on 'healthy cities), was a somewhat blustery start to proceedings! The tour started with a simple question; how many of us had known anyone who had died before their time from heart disease? Or cancer... or dementia... or a respiratory illness? Coronary heart disease is one of the biggest causes of premature death, yet an active lifestyle  reduces the chances of having a heart attack by 30%. It seems a no-brainer to suggest we should all be walking and cycling on a daily basis, yet the reality is that many of our roads simply aren't safe enough for our most vulnerable citizens. The biggest cause of death of children aged 10-18 is from road traffic accident s.  Read highlighted the fact ma...

The ' Stop Killing Cyclists ' campaign group held their '10 by 2020' march to the treasury on Saturday 11th February. The event was also a vigil for the three cyclists killed on London's roads that week and a very poignant statement from the husband of Anita Szucs, who was killed in an apparent hit and run, was read out and the dangers of poor air quality were emphasised alongside that of road safety for both pedestrians and cyclists. Wheels for Wellbeing is an inclusive cycling charity based in Herne Hill (using the veldrome for all ability sessions) and we are vocal in our support of their work.  Abigail Tripp, one of their team, also spoke at the event and we were extremely saddened to hear that she has been severely injured in a cycling accident earlier this year. We wish her a swift recovery and wish to thank her for sharing her experiences with us at #10by2020. On a more positive note, we would like to think that the commitment made by Edinburgh Co...

Active Travel Events There are many events for families interested in active travel this half-term.  Today (Saturday 11th February) sees the Stop Killing Cyclists vigil and family-friendly march, calling for increased spending on walking and cycling, following UN recommendations. The Southwark Cyclists will be leading a guided ride from Peckham Square for anyone unsure of how to ride into the National Gallery, where the event begins. Throughout the week, Cycle Confident will be running free Bikeability courses for anyone aged 6  and over in Dulwich Park.  To sign up visit www.cycleconfident.com. Herne Hill Velodrome is running their children's cycling sessions throughout the week and the Lee Valley Centre offers Athletics Master classes as well as track or mountain biking taster sessions at the Velo Park. Brockwell Junior Park Run is open for all 4-14 year olds looking to get PBs on 2km courses.  The next one will be Saturday 19th at 9am. ...