Ten primary and nursery schools have become the first in North Lanarkshire to launch their school travel plans – strategies specifically designed to identify and encourage safer, healthier, and more environmentally-friendly ways to get to and from school.

The schools - Golfhill, Newarthill, Shawhead, Newmains, Kirk O' Shotts, Old Monkland, Thornlie, St Dominic's and Baird Memorial Primary Schools, as well as Richard Stewart Nursery School - created their plans with the help of a specially-developed software package from North Lanarkshire Council. The plans aim to reduce the volume of cars on the school run, encourage better long-term travel choices and promote the importance of good road safety education, as well as to create environmentally-aware, sustainable options for school-related journeys.

The idea is to encourage the community to work together to help relieve congestion, offer schoolchildren healthier lifestyle choices like walking and cycling, and reduce traffic pollution. To help the process along, the council developed the specialist software package that helped analyse each school's travel patterns and examine relevant alternatives.

"Early on in the process we recognised that the best way to develop and monitor school travel plans would be some kind of software programme – but we quickly found that none existed," said David McDove, Policy & Safety Team Leader with North Lanarkshire Council's traffic and transportation service.

"Officers from environmental services and from learning and leisure services, working in partnership with the Seemis Group, therefore developed new software that would answer our needs.

"It helped to analyse the travel habits and needs of each pupil and member of staff, and to create a travel plan template based on that analysis. In fact, it has been so successful that Sustrans, the UK's leading sustainable transport charity, has given the software its full support, and is now looking at its potential to be rolled out across Scotland."

The council first delivered an in-service course to all teachers who would be using the new software and developing the travel plans, before introducing the software to the schools. Every pupil was then asked to complete a survey designed to demonstrate how far they travelled to school, and what means of transport was used. Additional questions were intended to identify problems – real or imagined – with changing travel patterns and methods.

Once completed, survey results were run through the software programme, which generated easy-to-read reports that formed the basis of the discussions around the travel plan. A travel team, composed of a school 'travel champion', junior road safety officers, pupils from the eco or health committees or the pupil council and a parent council member or similar volunteer.

Wider consultation took the form of letters sent out to the community, and responses were amalgamated with the schools' studies and used to develop an appropriate travel plan that included short, medium and long-term aims to be achieved via both educational and engineering initiatives.

For example, education initiatives like Streetsense, Kerbcraft and The Childrens' Traffic Club develop and enhance road safety knowledge, while events like Walk to School Week encourage pupils to take the healthier option. And a unique new initiative from North Lanarkshire Council – Smart Feet – aims to extend that encouragement all year round.

Other schools are installing bicycle racks and delivering cycle training, while others still are working with the council to introduce traffic calming measures like speed bumps and speed limit signage. Altogether, such measures are intended to reduce unnecessary use of cars and to offer pupils healthier lifestyle choices.

"Encouraging children to walk to school will help improve their health, raise road safety awareness, help develop independence and help develop sustainable travel habits," said Councillor James Coyle, Convener of the Planning and Transportation Committee.

"It will also take many cars off the road, reducing congestion and greenhouse gases and creating better air quality and a better overall environment. I congratulate the schools and the services for all their hard work, and look forward to seeing this programme roll out to all schools in North Lanarkshire."

Councillor Jim Logue, Convener of the Learning and Leisure Committee, also praised the schools for their hard work, and said he was determined to see every primary school in North Lanarkshire develop a School Travel Plan as soon as possible.

"This is an important initiative," he said. "School Travel Plans will help us develop the four capacities in the curriculum for excellence; benefit the environment; meet our air and noise quality obligations and protect the future health and well-being of all our children.

"So I would like to thank everyone who has worked so hard on this project to date, and congratulate them on what they have achieved. This is a project that will have a significant impact on all of us as we move into the future."