On Behalf Of willtell9z


--- In LotsLessCars@ <mailto:LotsLessCars%40yahoogroups.com>
yahoogroups.com, "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
wrote:

''.. what is important is that the kids get there under their own
steam and safely.. ..''

And of course WSB (walking school bus) doesn't actually achieve this.

Yet the newspaper article presents a resounding triumph :-

'' the news from Australia that the Auckland Regional Transport
Authority had won a prestigious international award for its TravelWise
programme for schools..''

And Roland tells us

''. I just thought I'd pass on the fact that Auckland in New Zealand
has had really significant success with walking school buses, resulting
a million
fewer car tripes per year.''

(I hope this ''tripe'' isnt a Freudian slip :-))

Looking into the ''cautious evaluation report '' I notice the
increase of independent walking is only 2%; walking school bus up
only by 1.6% ; cycling up only by 0.1% ; public transport down by 3.1%
. ...and a few other not very optimistic looking stats, (IMHO).

Eg family car use is down by 3.8% but ''using friends cars'' is up
2.8%.

No wonder the overall decline in car use to school is only 3.8%

(Until recently I lived next door to a primary school. Would I, or
the school occupants have noticed if 97 cars rolled up at the school
gates instead of the hundred last year? I doubt it.)

How this programme adds up to ''a million fewer car trips'' beats me.
And if the stats are correct, doesn't it just show that a million
out of a squillion is just a drop in the ocean.

Are walking school buses really a cause for celebration or just a
variant of the old road safety establishment ''evidence''- the roads
are ''safer'' by citing fewer casualties, when in fact this only
proves the roads are more dangerous. (Less casualties occurring only
because the roads have become so dangerous that they're avoided and
there's no longer any humans around to get killed.)

In this quoted case it seems children are no longer walking
independently, nor cycling, let alone playing in these streets.

''.. He and parent volunteers of Gladstone Primary's Zippy walking bus
were busy rounding up more than 50 youngsters, before escorting them
safely home for the weekend along Carrington and Woodward Rds in Mt
Albert.

Woodward Traffic was fast and furious on both roads, and a passenger
train barrelling through the Rd crossing to meet its timetable with no
sign of slowing....''

Surely having to ''round up'' and marshal children by vigilantes
before they can be escorted safely along their own streets shouldn't be
something we're proud of at all. Couldn't the truth be that
walking buses only demonstrate the extent to which we have surrendered
to aggressive motor vehicles in this society and now tolerate the
hostility of motors even in our own local streets wrecking our
environment and communities?

So my note of dissent would be that routes to school can't be regarded
as safe until we genuinely reduce the number of cars in the towns and
cities and force drivers go so slowly that children can comfortably
walk, run, skate, cycle and play in their own district's streets
unsupervised and don't need to be marshalled by men in yellow
fluorescent danger jackets. Indeed I notice in the UK schemes that
everyone has to wear high-visibility clothing, -meaning the children
dressed up in banana danger jackets -and we call it ''safety''.

Bill Telfer