Will children be back on the streets?

Figures of the VIAS Institute, an independent and multidisciplinary knowledge centre, show that 13 young people a day are injured in a traffic accident on their way to school. Flemish Minister for Mobility and Public Works Lydia Peeters considers road safety to be a top priority. Minister Peeters is investing 30 million euros via the Flemish Resilience recovery plan to create safer school environments and school routes. School routes run along both regional and municipal roads and are not always safe. And yet this is a condition for parents for letting their children go to school on their own.

Minister Peeters is investing:

• 15 million euros in a new grant for safe school routes along municipal roads via the Department of Mobility and Public Works
• 15 million euros in the elimination of bottlenecks along regional roads by the Agency for Roads and Traffic.

Since 2019, more than 1,000 school environments have been made safer in almost 200 cities and municipalities in Flanders. The Government of Flanders was able to realise this thanks to a total investment of 6.6 million euros which centres around active road users. By the end of February 2021, local authorities had identified more than 801 bottlenecks along school routes on regional roads.

Walking and cycling: good for body and mind

The campaign ‘Keep on cycling everyone’ (Bijf fietsen allemaal) has given Lydia Peeters the proverbial push in the right direction.

A lot of children travel to and from school by car every day even though many of them live less than 3 kilometres from their school. Children also sit still for several hours a day.
Walking and cycling promotes their motor development and ensures a healthy mental and social balance. Moreover, cycling to school is good for the environment.

With a few extra initiatives, Minister Peeters wants to make the best possible use of this modal and mental shift to ensure that this turnaround does not remain a one-off, but guarantees a sustainable evolution.