Our project

introduction

We are class JT, Year 5, from St Thomas of Canterbury Primary School, Fulham, London. We worked on our Safer Routes to School project from November 1999 to May 2000.

plotting our routes

We started our project by putting our routes to school on a map and thought if they could be safer and quicker.

looking at the past

In our work we started by covering the history of the local area. We found out the differences between now and then. Today there is much more housing in the area, shops have changed into different shops, some schools and churches have stayed the same. There is much more traffic on the road and the environment has got dramatically worse because everyone is using their own car instead of four people using on car. This would mean less cars on the road, making it safer for children to walk to school.

a photography audit

We went out and took photographs of things that made our area feel unsafe. We found many things including badly parked cars, obstacles, litter and graffiti.

an environmental assessment

We did lots of surveys in the area including car counts and environment surveys. We all had discussions in class about our findings and in January 2000 government officials came to speak to us about the work we have been doing.

EVIDENCE
We went out on one of our surveys and we used a special device called a 'Speed Gun'. It works like a real gun but it is different. You fire it at the cars and it catches the speed of the car. Most of our speed gun victims were going either too fast or too slow.

interviewing experts

PAUL BAKER's job is to measure air quality in the borough. We asked him why good air quality is important. He told us "Poor air quality can affect people with breathing difficulties and asthma and can irritate our noses and throats."

CARLOS FOSTER is a traffic engineer. He designs schemes to reduce traffic and make the roads safer. Here are some examples of traffic calming measures that Carlos is going to have built in our area - cycle lanes, raised crossings and rumble strips.

ANTHEA COOKE is the borough's Health Strategy Officer and she would like to see a lot more help for children to walk and cycle to school. She thinks it is fun to walk and talk with your friends and family, as well as a chance to get to know them better.

ANDREW HILEY is a transport planner. He said the council is looking at every school in the borough to see how they can make it easier for children to walk and cycle to school. They have been sending out questionnaires to find out what people think.

MIKE LACHOWICZ said that Friends of the Earth tries to look after the world and make it safe for people. He thinks walking is good exercise and said we could have a school crocodile on a popular route to school. An adult would lead and pick up children on the way. We could have little footprints painted red and green on the pavement. Green means its safe to go, red means you have to stop.

surveys

We designed and sent out questionnaire surveys to students, parents and staff of the school. We asked people how they travelled to school, where they lived, what their journey time was and many other questions. We found a lot of interesting things, such as only 2% of students travel by bike but 40% would like to. Parents said they would not let their children travel to school by bike because it is too dangerous, they are too young, they have poor road sense and there are not enough cycle lanes.

presentations

We went to the Urban Studies Centre in order to meet some council officers and other important people who have jobs which affect our local area. We presented our work to them and then had an opportunity to ask them questions. We wanted to know what they were doing to make our local environment better. We also presented our work at a parents evening.

consultation

A Landscape architect came in to talk to us and hear about our recommendations on how to improve our local area. He wrote them all down and then we had to sign it.