School travel as a product of school system, school location and transport strategies : a comparative exploration of four northwest European countries.

School travel may be regarded to be a key factor in developing sustainable travel. Children have to develop the ability to participate in travel ontheir own, on foot, by bike or by public transport, if necessary. There is a tendency towards passive transport in the back seat of a car. The opportunities for sustainable school travel are affected by three types of government policies. The school system is decisive for the scale of individual schools and thus for the size of catchment areas. Location policies decide whether soft travel modes can be used. Transport strategies are likely to have a large impact on the choice for certain travel modes. The education travel motive is neglected by transport science. It evolves strongly ona national basis and is therefore hard to understand for foreigners. Thismakes comparative international studies rare. Yet this type of study is essential for the development of insights into the potential relations between the factors which are influencing school travel. These factors which can explain school travel are analysed for four countries: the Flanders region of Belgium, England, the German state of Niedersachsen and the Netherlands. General characteristics of the school system are presented with a focus on the two aspects: the relative freedom of education for both providers and customers and the relative integration in education: early differentiation or an undivided school up to an age of about 16. The Netherlands has a large degree of freedom, whereas the opposite is true in Germany. Location policies are discussed with regard to two types of policies: the policy to cluster different schools at one location and (not unrelated) the policy to relocate schools to suburbia. These are tendencies which prove tobe rather common. The Netherlands are foremost in clustering primary schools. School transport policies show large differences from massive school bus transport in rural Germany to the near absence of it in the Netherlands in areas with a similar geography. School travel data are presented for the Netherlands, Flanders and Britain, based on their respective national travel surveys. The analysis shows that, given differences in the school system, location policies like the use of rural satellites may have a significant impact on travel. School bus transport, lying at the end of the causal chain, may have a range of functions: compensating for school closures, exercising free school choice, reducing car travel and avoiding traffic hazard. The integration with general transport policies may generate both surprising levels of cycling (as in the Netherlands) and questionable quality in bus transport (Niedersachsen). For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999