Linköping
Linköping, a Swedish city with quite an advanced cycling infrastructure, recognized the necessity to change the parents’ attitude especially to stop the vicious circle of taking their children to school by car. They organized a very successful campaign for cycling and walking to school to avoid car trips shorter than 5 km. The campaign was accompanied by school lectures on health, environmental aspects, cycling and traffic safety and was covered by the media. The first highlight was a leaflet handed out to pupils and parents with four good reasons to walk or cycle. The leaflet included a competition: Pupils should write in twenty words why cars should not be used for short distances. The prize was a meeting with the famous local ice-hockey team. Their players were good examples for the children by recommending training by cycling to school. The best of the 900 slogans from the competition were exhibited on Eurosize Pictures in the city.
The practical part of “Walk or Cycle to School” for the pupils went on for two months in autumn. All pupils from the participating schools received a travel diary for a fortnight to report about their trip to school each day. After each fortnight the diaries were collected and the distances walked and cycled were added and drawn on a special map of Europe in each school. The saved tons of CO2 were also measured and the newspaper published the total of all schools on a world map. The success of this campaign was well covered by mass media and motivated pupils, their teachers and parents and the project team.
Travel diary for a fortnight
Distances walked and cycled are drawn on a map
World map showing the total distance of all pupils and saved tons of CO2 during the project