*Government department promotes an activity by carefully not depicting said activity*
We’d love to promote cycling to school daily for primary school kids, never mind older. Remind us, who’s spending £27bn more on roads, rather than infra we ALL need to cycle for utility? Thread! https://twitter.com/transportgovuk/status/1299370154049048576

It would have been so easy for us to have made a video, with smiling young cyclists on expensive road bikes. But it would have been dishonest. Our girls walk to school, and most children of primary age can and should. Statutory walking distance is only two miles, after all...

We could have made it look ever so snazzy and aspirational. Think opening credits of the modern ‘Topsy and Tim’, as Topsy, with a face like a young Bonnie Langford, soars into lens flare and manufactured sunlight. We could have done that, but with bikes.

We could have presented cycling to school as ‘motherhood and apple pie’, something which everyone can and should do. If we were in the Netherlands, that’d be right. And we’d have set kids and parents up for a fall when they encountered the reality of their specific journey, here.

Thomas Ivor, same age as Ruby, had ridden a 100 mile day before he entered year 7. Roadcraft beyond his years. That’s still immaterial to the feasibility, safety or appropriateness of him cycling to school alone, which his Dad did at the same age.

What? Family ByCycle’ knocking the idea of cycling to school? Well, yes, and no - because whilst we think it would be the gold standard, for so very many reasons related to health, wellbeing and independence, it has to be done with suitable infrastructure. And not just paths!

Many children can’t ride a bike, don’t own one and/or have nobody to teach them road technique. Bikeability is far from universal, expertise and modelling amongst teachers, patchy. The level taught at Year 6 is arguably too little, far too late.

We need secure bike parking and tools at schools. We need a more sensible approach to risk, with DfE giving schools a firm steer on policy and OFSTED scrutinising active travel arrangements. And we need infrastructure which a Year 3 pupil can safely use on a wet winter’s morning.

If @transportgovuk & @educationgovuk want to put money where their mouth is, they bin the £27bn road building programme and let’s ‘Build Build Build’, to quote the PM, on a foundation of fit, healthy, independent children & families who’re given the best shot at every school day.

This isn’t to say that some children can’t or shouldn’t cycle to school now, where infra, age, experience and support is there; it *definitely* isn’t impossible for many, *many* more children to walk to school, with immediate effect! This needs to be ‘sold’, in a relateable way.

So, not to decry the notion of ‘selling’ cycling to school at all. The ‘Bakfiets Mums’ in London, Cambridge etc. are making it work. Other people are spending a fortune on FollowMe tandems to tow perfectly able child cyclists to schools, on unfriendly roads. Fair play to them.

We’ve joined them, ditching a car now we have our Onderwater tandem. But we’d never have bought that bike if we lived in , because Ruth & Rhoda would already be totally independent for utility journeys. It’s us mitigating crap infrastructure, bad driving and poor enforcement.

*Some* kids are riding to school successfully and in numbers - but generally thanks to local initiatives, and it doesn’t look like that film. Determined parents, bold councils and exceptional schools with stand-out leaders make it happen. Little that DfT can claim the credit for.

We are all about promoting cycling for children and families. It’s literally why we’re on Twitter. We live and breathe it. Cycling to school next week in the U.K. will not typically look even vaguely like that film; rather than just pretending, Government must own the reality!

Children are more likely to be killed by traffic than coronavirus, yet there’s not much relative urgency it seems, about a systemic, thorough rethinking of how we live and travel in our communities. School streets, etc should be *baseline* stuff now. Nationally led and specified.

So, yes, I would dearly love all four of our children to have the means to respond to the Government’s call, and cycle to secondary school independently when the time comes. But without drastic change, even our children, with a head start, probably won’t. What chance the rest?

In closing, we hope parents, schools and communities will promote, assist and *use* active travel next week - but there HAVE been better times to walk, cycle & scoot to school - decades ago. We can but hope a Government one day has the gumption to build better times to come. End.