The Active Travel England (ATE), British Government initiative has announced that up to 2 million more children will have access to walk to school, cycle training programmes over the next 2 years with a multimillion-pound investment.
According to the initiative publication on Thursday stating that £60 million package will help parents have more confidence to walk or cycle with their kids on the school run by funding initiatives, give more children better road skills and aim to help make it easier for parents to choose greener travel options.
The initiatives will enable more young people to make active choices when travelling in their communities while the 2-year funding will include £50 million to expand Bikeability cycle training to a million more young people.
While this scheme has already delivered training to more than 4 million children since 2007, now additional 2 million children will now benefit from programmes to make it easier and safer to walk and cycle to school.
A further £5 million will support walk to school programmes aimed at hundreds of thousands of pupils in schools across England via the charity Living Streets.
Reacting to this development, the Active Travel Commissioner, Chris Boardman said, “Giving kids transport independence and enabling them to walk, wheel or cycle on the school run is what they want, and what we want for them.
Adding that, “This £60 million funding package will help put the joy back into journeys and create a generation of young people who feel confident to make healthier, greener travel choices”, Boardman said.
Also included in the package is £4 million to extend Cycling UK’s Big Bike Revival programme to March 2025, while the scheme has already engaged over 80,000 people of ages, helping them learn cycling basics and feel more confident while pedalling.
Meanwhile, an additional £500,000 will fund an extension to the Modeshift STARS and Active Travel Ambassador schemes.
The STARS program provides recognition for schools, businesses, organisations that show excellence in supporting and delivering active travel plans in their community.
Active Travel Ambassadors work with secondary school students to encourage their peers to travel actively.