The Woman Who Stops Traffic - C4 9pm 26th Feb

[Eleanor]

Did anyone see this last night?
It involved a campaign in Marlow to get people to leave their cars at home for a day and walk/cycle to work/school. It was wonderful to see children walking to school and the total lack of cars parked around the school.
There are two more episodes to come. Next week it is from Boston in Lincs (if it is still there  ).

[martin]

I saw it too - good for her! Confirmed my view that most of the congestion is caused by blessed school-runners
I think what was very telling was when she held up a map with the school in the centre, with a dot for each pupil's postcode - a great many were being driven to school within both the half mile and quarter mile circles!!!!!!!! (and they wonder why we're rearing a race of blobbies)

[Paulh_Boats]

Eleanor,

A brilliant idea but would take a lot of organising round here. Our kids would have to negotiate a twisty, narrow B road around the side of a hill - hard work up and down, 3 miles each way, a bit dangerous and there is no alternative road.

Ideally the council would add a cycle lane, but it would be prohibitively expensive I expect.   To top it all, the bus company pulled out of the route years ago on the grounds that it was not economic. A heavy bus subsidy might fix it and I would be happy to pay whatever they charge.

What we have resigned ourselves to is me dropping them off en-route to work, in a way that only adds 2 miles on clear roads and there is no phantom return journey.

-Paul

[lightfoot]

Funny how things have changed, when I was a lad within reason it was the norm to walk a couple of miles to school, in fact when I moved to a school that was much further away, even though there was a school coach we regularly used to miss it on purpose so we could walk home just for a laugh....O happy days 

I guess many parents are paranoid about kiddy fiddlers etc.

Lightfoot.

[Ivan]

My sister drops her 4year old at the school by car every day if she can manage it. Even scrounges lifts or taxi rides if no car available. I can't understand it, as her lad loves walking, and would love the opportunity to ride his little bike. Unfortunately, this start in life soon turns into reliance on engine-assisted transport. The reason, apparently, is they are always late. Having said that, it takes 20minutes to walk and 10minutes+ to drive, due to congestion. A few days ago, it took a few hours to get home due to diverted traffic from dual carriageway 

When Georgia is old enough for school, we're definitely going to be walking!

[Eleanor]

I thought that one of the most interesting comments was that individually it isn't possible to make a great difference but when everyone joins in the effect can be very significant. It certainly showed how it is possible to mobilise people into action although being on telly probably helped. I suppose there must have been peer pressure not to be the only one parking the Chelsea tractor outside the school in full view of the cameras. It will be interesting to see how long lived the effect is - perhaps I'll just hop in the car and go and have a look .....