Active School Travel - Cinnabar Valley Elementary
Cinnabar Valley Elementary School has been selected to participate in Nanaimo’s Active School Travel program in 2024 and 2025. The City of Nanaimo is overseeing the Active School Travel (AST) process with support from Urban Systems Ltd.
What is Active School Travel?
Active School Travel (AST) aims to get more people walking, biking, and rolling to school, and to make it safer for them to do so.
Nanaimo’s AST Guide states:
“The goal of Active School Travel planning is to empower individuals and groups to work with their school community to identify, plan and implement initiatives that increase the safety of students and families travelling to and from school each day, as well as to increase the number of students and families traveling to and from school in a healthy, sustainable and physically active manner”
Project goals:
- Increase awareness of AST and its benefits
- Improve the safety and convenience of AST
- Increase student, caregiver, and school administration confidence in AST.
- Motivate students and caregivers to choose AST more often.
- Maximize education and encouragement initiatives (such as special events, contests, and training) in addition to engineering initiatives (such as physical changes to the roadway).
What are the benefits of Active School Travel?
Student Health: Daily exercise has numerous health benefits. Healthy habits established at a young age are more likely to be maintained for years to come. Exercising on the way to school can decrease the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and experiencing childhood obesity. It can also decrease stress, depression, and anxiety, while increasing overall happiness.
Academic Performance: Physical activity before school helps students stay alert and focused in class, and supports healthy brain development in children.
Neighbourhood & School Safety: Actively traveling to school helps children learn how to travel safely. Fewer vehicle trips to schools reduces congestion at pick up and drop off times, and decreases the potential for collisions.
Air Quality: Fewer car trips to school reduces air pollution around our schools, and in our community overall.
Carbon Emissions & Climate Change: Reducing the number of car trips to school decreases greenhouse gas emissions.
Process
Spring 2024 - Project kick off meeting, initial site visits
Fall 2024 – Project webpage launch, community and classroom surveys, PAC meetings, principal meetings, baseline conditions analysis
Winter 2025 – School walkabouts, BikeWalkRoll Survey
Spring 2025 - [WE ARE HERE] Draft AST Plans, second community survey, PAC update, Final Active School Travel Plans
Community Survey #2!
Share your thoughts for a chance to win a $100 gift card to the local bike shop of your choice.