The Westminster bubble has a new magic number, and it's 60%.
By 2035, the government wants nearly two-thirds of all children in England between five and 16 to walk, cycle, or wheel their way to school. Right now, that figure sits at a stubborn 45%. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is pinning her hopes on a £4.5 billion package over five years, promising 5,000 new safe routes and 10,000 safer crossings by 2030.
It sounds wonderful on paper. It hits all the right notes about childhood obesity, carbon emissions, and building healthy habits. But if you talk to any parent trying to get a couple of kids out the door on a rainy Tuesday morning, you quickly realise why these targets feel like they were written by people who haven't done a school run in decades.
The plan ignores the brutal logistics of the modern working day. It treats transport as an isolated choice rather than what it actually is: a delicate, high-stakes jigsaw puzzle.
The Time Crunch is Real
Let's look at the numbers. If you live a mile away from school, an adult pacing themselves can walk that in about 15 or 20 minutes. Dragging a seven-year-old along stretches that to 30 minutes. If you walk there, drop them off at 8:45 AM, and walk back, you've used up an hour of your morning.
If both parents work—which is pretty much mandatory for most households—that hour is a luxury nobody has.
Morning Routine Comparison:
Driving: 5-minute drop-off on the way to the office.
Walking: 60-minute round trip before the commute even starts.
Many parents work miles away from where their kids go to school. Dropping the kids off in the car on the way to the office isn't laziness. It's the only way to avoid getting fired for being late every day. Expecting families to abandon their cars without changing how workplaces operate or how school hours are structured is just wishful thinking.
Secondary Schools are the Hard Part
Previous active travel campaigns focused heavily on primary schools, mostly because younger kids live closer to home. This new strategy expands the net to include teenagers up to 16. That's where the wheels really start to fall off.
Catchment areas for secondary schools are massive. It's not uncommon for a teenager to live four or five miles away from their campus. Expecting a 13-year-old to cycle along busy, unlit rural roads or through heavy urban traffic in the winter isn't just unrealistic; it's terrifying for parents.
While the government promises thousands of new routes, infrastructure takes years to build. We've seen cycling lanes that abruptly end at major roundabouts, leaving riders stranded in three lanes of fast-moving traffic. Until there is actual, physical separation between bikes and heavy goods vehicles, parents will keep using their cars as protective steel bubbles for their kids.
De-escalating the War on Motorists
To her credit, Heidi Alexander is trying to change the tone. She explicitly stated there is "no war on motorists" in this plan, acknowledging that most people use multiple ways to get around. They might drive to a station, catch a train, and then walk the last bit.
The strategy reflects this by changing how journeys are counted. Under the new rules, if a short trip includes any active travel stage—like cycling to a bus stop—it counts toward the urban target of 55% active trips by 2035. This is a much smarter, more pragmatic approach than the old ideological battles that pitted cyclists against drivers.
But shifting the metric doesn't magically fix the infrastructure gap. The £4.5 billion funding sounds massive, but spread across England over five years, it gets stretched incredibly thin. Local councils are already broke, struggling to fix basic potholes, let alone design world-class active travel networks from scratch.
What Needs to Happen Next
If the government genuinely wants to hit that 60% target, it has to look beyond just painting white lines on pavements. We need practical solutions that fit into real life.
- Expand Wraparound Care: Schools need to open earlier and close later. If a parent can drop a child at a walking bus group at 7:45 AM instead of waiting until 8:45 AM, it unlocks the time needed to avoid driving.
- Fund Secure Bike Storage: There's no point encouraging a teenager to cycle to school if their bike gets stolen from a rusty rack during maths class. Schools need secure, covered bike hubs.
- Focus on the Walking Bus: Parents don't have time to walk their own kids every day, but they do have time to volunteer once a week. Heavily subsidised, community-led walking buses can manage the logistics for dozens of families at once.
We don't need more grand declarations or distant 2035 targets. We need small, practical changes that make walking less of a logistical nightmare for stressed, working families. Until then, the school run will remain a bottleneck of idling engines and frustrated parents.
