Hands Up Survey (5)

Well, I started the year optimistically with more bikes and scooters in the bike compound in the first few weeks than we had last year. Having completed our survey today, with cooler weather I was hopefully that we may have increased our active travel to school. Alas I was wrong! In fact our car travel has increased 5 % and there has been a 28 % drop in bike/scooter travel and 13 % drop in walking to school from this time last year. A number of students told me that they normally ride but today they were dropped off. Is this because I have surveyed on a Friday for the first time ever, is it because of the escalating Covid numbers in our community, it is that students are tired at the end of the week, prior to a long weekend, I don't know?

Attendance numbers are decreasing each day (often due to Covid and students being close contacts and needing to isolate) and we have some 200 students absent today. I could not find a few classes today and so I am missing a little bit of data but I don't think that would change the data significantly. I counted bikes and scooters in the bike compound today and we had 51 but only 41 students told me that they had ridden or scooted to school. May the difference is the missing classes that I did not count, not sure.

Our bike compound is getting a roof over it in the April holidays. It will be interesting to see if that get improves our bike riding and scooting to school.