National Ride2School Day aims to encourage and empower students to get physically active on their journey to school.
More than 350,000 students and families across Australia take part in the annual celebration, leaving the car at home and giving walking, wheeling or riding a go.
Active travel to school can have many benefits for the mental and physical wellbeing of children, as well as for the environment, economy and broader transport network.
However, over the past 40 years, the national rate of walking and bike riding to school has declined from 75 to 25 per cent, and in Perth the rate is as low as 20 per cent.
DoT is leading work to reverse this trend, championed through the Active Travel to School Roadmap, which aims to address barriers preventing active travel to school including:
- poor path accessibility;
- traffic around schools;
- safety;
- distance; and
- parent/carer time constraints.
