Audit Complete .... phew!

What a term we have had! We have had a record number of active transport events this term.

We are very pleased to have finally completed our school infrastructure audit. This audit conducted with our team and multiple community stake holders (including the local shire and the town’s Road Wise Committee) further added value to our term planner of events and will guide our team going forward to prioritise the addition of new infrastructure into our school.

The audits key findings were that:

• ·Bike and scooter infrastructure is aged or insufficient to need with a total of 25 bike racks available for students to use. Many students were unable to holster their bikes with new bike racks needed to provide great coverage. This will be a focus for future school expenditure and grant applications.
• Signage for buses was insufficient and in need of replacement. I discussed this with the local shire and our Road Wise community committee – and new signage has now been commissioned for installation in coming weeks.
• Whilst we would prefer to have a fully manned crossing, this has deemed unnecessary by Main Roads as mitigation measures by the school already exceed requirements.
• Polling of students found that 80% of students had a bike at home, with 60% of these students able to ride a bike to school. The other 40% were unable to ride to school as bikes are not permitted on school buses or they simply lived too far from the school site (navigating 110km speed zones was not recommended).
• The school was unable to secure a number of organisations to visit the school due to our location (of which were provided free to metro schools). In partnership with the road wise committee, we are looking at ways in which this can be mitigated or sponsored. We have already engaged with the local police to provide bike and road safety presentations and will work with the RAC Little Legends Club to further promote road safety at school.
• A new bike shed or shelter was found to be a high priority for our school and would help to address our storage capacity concerns.
• The installation of a bike and scooter track was strongly supported by students with 100% of students thinking this would add value to the school. Concerns were raised such the potential attraction this would bring to school when closed (which could result in damage and unwelcome visitors on school site). A compromise was discussed to move this to our tennis courts which could be adapted and locked to alleviate access concerns.

The audit was a greatly valuable opportunity for us as a school to plan for the future and target resourcing to achieve our goals. We highly recommend this activity to all schools.