Page 2462 - Week 08 - Thursday, 6 August 2015
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walk to school program. It is being undertaken as part of the government’s healthy weight initiative. Particularly, the pilot will work with the schools to identify those activities that support increased active travel to school.
An important component of the pilot is the trial of a range of new engineering measures. I am pleased to announce that two of the schools will have new dragon’s teeth road markings installed at the start of their 40-kilometre per hour school zone. These highly visible road markings will further raise driver awareness of entry to school zones and the importance of drivers slowing down and taking care.
Another new trial as part of the program will be 30-kilometre per hour speed zones at two of the pilot schools. This element will work hand in hand with facilitating increased numbers of students walking and riding to school at the pilot schools. Additionally, the pilot schools will be examined for further improvements to assist their students walking and riding to school. These will include the need for new pedestrian crossings and improvements to path and other travel signage. The pilot schools will also participate in additional active travel measures—for example, maps identifying active travel routes to schools, information on how families can plan their daily routes to support active travel to and from the school, and classroom and homework activities for school engagement.
An element of the active streets program pilot is the development of drop-off points in safe areas a short distance from the schools. These park and walk areas assist in reducing the traffic volume at the school while enabling children and their parents to walk or ride a short distance to school. Park and walk safe drop-off points are typically a few hundred metres from the school. Development of a park and walk drop-off point will be supported by signage and a footpath stencilling, identifying the ride and walk pathways to school.
The well-loved Constable Kenny Koala stay okay on the road program continues to be an important contributor to promoting road safety education and awareness messaging at schools and community events. Constable Kenny’s messages are closely aligned with school-based learning in such areas as using safety equipment such as seatbelts and helmets, safe behaviours when walking or riding, and being aware of and using proper road rules. Over the year 2014-15 Constable Kenny has made more than 170 visits to our schools to share this message.
ACT Policing schedules targeted operations in school zones at the beginning of each school term and will target driving behaviour which places vulnerable road users at risk, including in and around our school precincts. Over recent years ACT Policing has conducted road operations at every school in every term. This important presence around our schools will continue into the future and will include high visibility patrols, unmarked patrols, monitoring and enforcement around speed, crossings and parking, and seatbelt compliance.
In addition to this programmed road safety approach, ACT Policing works closely with schools to conduct targeted operations in response to particular issues. I am proud that we are expanding our mobile camera sites to ACT schools so as to support our safe school precinct planning. The ACT road camera strategy, released in May of
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