Comment: Time to take action on young people’s travel

Barbara Hearn, deputy chief executive, NCB
Thursday 24 September 2009

Recent government guidance on children and young people's access to positive activities represents a positive step towards recognising the centrality of safe, affordable and accessible transport to wellbeing.

When we stop to imagine how children and young people can be assisted in realising the Every Child Matters outcomes, it becomes clear just how crucial transport is to being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic wellbeing.

And yet children and young people still face many barriers to travel, including high and inconsistent costs, safety fears, poor travel information and inappropriate scheduling. These can lead to poor access - not only to positive leisure, sporting and cultural activities, but to crucial education, training and employment opportunities. Poor public transport increases children's dependence on car travel, increasing their risk of road traffic accidents and reducing their independence and likelihood of using more environmentally sustainable modes of transport through life.

If we are to help today's generation develop a life-long relationship with public transport, much work needs to be done so that high costs, poor services and personal safety fears no longer influence a young person's decision about how to get to college, a job interview or even a football game. With such high numbers not in employment, education or training and university places oversubscribed, it is crucial that young people have improved access to the opportunities that do exist.

NCB is therefore calling on directors of children's services and transport authorities to work with young people and use the government's recent Transport Guidance: Supporting Access to Positive Activities as a basis to ensure that the travel needs of all community members are met.

More from NCB:

Find out more about NCB's policy priorities.