Johanne Levers, St Michael's C of E Primary School - Winner
Johanne Levers is a parent, governor and teaching assistant at St Michael’s Primary School in Wandsworth, London. Her commitment to school travel at St Michael’s has been remarkable ever since she first approached Wandsworth Council with a view to launching a walking bus in May 2005. A variety of initiatives have helped to maintain the momentum of the bus and foster unity between the passengers. The bus is still running and has 22 regular children passengers and 20 volunteers who run it.
Jo has been the lead in the development and implementation of St Michael’s School Travel Plan and has maintained momentum for the travel plan over the last 5 years. With the support of the Headteacher, Jo also introduced the ‘name and shame’ campaign to stop people parking inconsiderately or illegally near the school entrance.
In 2008, Jo set up a team of Junior Road Safety Officers (JRSOs). Jo facilitates their meetings and introduces tasks for them to carry out, which include helping with pedestrian training sessions for younger children, updating the school travel notice board, writing to parents about concerns over scooters in the playground. The JRSOs go to each class to collect the numbers of pupils earning Walk on Wednesday badges each month. They are fully involved in the development of the school travel plan, including discussions about scootering and developing the ‘double WoW’ initiative. Jo also co-operated with the road safety officer in piloting an after-school cycling club. Finally, as a member of the school’s Premises Committee, Jo is ensuring that plans to extend the school include provision for cycle and scooter parking for pupils and staff.
The school has seen a consistent and remarkable decrease in levels of car use on the journey to school, from 31% in 2005 to 8% in 2010, and corresponding increase in the number of pupils walking to school, with over 91% of pupils walking in the January 2010 survey, compared with only 65% in 2005.
Fuad Omar, London Borough of Harrow
Fuad Omar is Harrow Council’s Sustainable Transport Officer. Fuad has shown an exceedingly high level of enthusiasm for his work in travel awareness and broke new ground in encouraging behaviour change.
In the past year alone he has come up with new events including a very different type of cycling promotion called a Roaming Bike Buddy, which converted actual journeys and got non-cyclists on a bike. He is in charge of the council’s sustainable transport promotions and single-handedly leads on Harrow’s popular It’s Up to All of Us campaign. He runs and writes the blog entries (www.itsuptoallofus.co.uk), he tweets (www.twitter.com/itsuptoallofus) and has directed the YouTube videos. He is extremely media savvy and has even recorded a series of podcasts on sustainable transport which he feeds into the campaign plan which spans five years.
His use of new media technologies to promote sustainable transport is pioneering. He used this new technology in innovative ways: using blog to discuss national green topics then using it to gage reaction to local reception of the same; educating about cleaner vehicles and tying it into the council’s air quality action plan; and raising awareness of car clubs and their benefits to a community that has been resistant to them. Fuad uses Twitter to target people who are stuck on the train/in traffic in real time and sell them sustainable transport. He also uses Facebook as a free car share match-up service.
Fuad has brought high profile celebrity endorsements (Martin Sheen, Shilpa Shetty and more) to Harrow at no cost. He got Neighbours’ Nicky Whelan to be the face of the council’s campaign and his blog is followed by people in President Obama’s administration and Governor Schwarzenegger.
Fuad confidently speaks at local events on the benefits of smarter travel. He really amazes those around him with his ideas, enthusiasm, presentations, workshops and ability to inspire.
Lindsay Chapman, National Physical Laboratory
Lindsay Chapman is the Senior Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory based in Teddington, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Lindsay’s innovative approach led her to develop an online booking system for the Dr Bike clinic, and staff are able to select the pre-determined time slot that is most convenient for them. Lindsay has also developed information leaflets/posters to promote the cycle courses to staff. Thanks to Lindsay’s exceptional promotional work, NPL have fully booked 18 hours worth of Dr Bike clinics in the last few months. In addition, the cycle maintenance course has also proved to be extremely popular amongst NPL staff with two courses fully booked.
Lindsay volunteered to coordinate the Teddington Bike to Work Week event held at the NPL Sports Ground in June 2009. As coordinator Lindsay took responsibility to develop a registration system and ensured that everything ran smoothly on the day. This included organising a marquee, tables and stands, food, drink and other facilities for visitors. Lindsay also contacted local cycle organisations to arrange freebies and information for staff. Activities such Dr Bike, police cycle marking, local bike shop and other cycling information were available on the day. Lindsay analysed the results of the registration survey and provided feedback to fellow Teddington members. Overall, the event was a huge success attracting over 250 people.
One of the highest scoring disincentives for cycling was inclement weather conditions. In order to combat this, using her background as a scientist, Lindsay produced some compelling statistical evidence to prove that the weather in Britain is not as bad as perceived and that regular cyclists do not get rained on very often at all.
Lindsay’s passion for sustainable transport and environmental issues is unwavering and she has become a role model who leads by example.
Alex Seibicke, Olympic Delivery Authority
Alex Seibicke has been seconded to work for the Delivery Partner, Olympic Delivery Authority to take forward the identification, planning and implementation of travel to work initiatives during the delivery of the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Alex has successfully led this work since October 2007 and has been working in a dynamic environment, reflecting the overall growth in the Olympic Park workforce to an estimated peak of 8,000 construction workers later this year - with an assumption that there is no on-site car parking for construction workers.
Alex has taken forward chairing the Olympic Park Travel Planing Group, which is a forum for the adjoining Boroughs and TfL to review and encourage in the preparation and delivery of the Olympic Park Construction Travel Plan. The travel plan was originally a "worse case" forecast of travel to work via Stratford Regional Station, but is now based on actual travel data, with Alex arranging and managing 6-monthly travel surveys across the Olympic Park. These surveys have been used to determine trends, identify targeted initiatives and ensure that suitable contingency plans are developed.
The initiatives which have been implemented through the travel plan include: Signing the Olympic Park for pedestrians from travel nodes (rail and bus) and for cyclists; provision and monitoring of secure cycle parking; provision of cycle/pedestrian route posters and public transport route posters; and holding a number of "Dr Bike" days to encourage cycling, including involvement of DHL to provide HGVs so that cyclists can understand the visibility issues for HGV drivers.
The most dynamic project has been the implementation of travel screens at the exits to the Olympic Park. These screens display real-time travel information for each rail mode most closely available from that exit, as well as the general transport status. Bus frequencies from nearby stops are also displayed dynamically.
