Let's Get Scotland Walking: NWS, Appendix 1: Suporting Material

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13. Successful Walking Marketing Campaign - Not Far, Leave the Car

A national campaign was launched in May 2013 to encourage people across Scotland to consider walking or cycling instead of taking short car journeys. The campaign focused on the fact that mile for mile, it's the short car journeys that create the most carbon emissions - and with one in three car journeys made in Scotland being under two miles, and nearly a quarter of all trips under a mile, people in Scotland were making a lot of short journeys. The campaign 'Not far? Leave the car' included TV, radio, digital display, social media, PR, bus and outdoor advertising, a national roadshow and working with partners. A smartphone app was created to help people plot and record shorter journeys in order to calculate the calories burned and emissions saved. The campaign was supported by the Greener Together public information campaign, not designed to drive a specific behaviour change but to support the individual campaigns such as Active Travel, being part of creating a cleaner, greener Scotland.

The results appeared to indicate that the campaign was successful in:

• increasing awareness of advertising encouraging leaving the car for short journeys (from 38% to 59% of the surveyed population sample)
• motivating the public - 45% of people who had seen the campaign felt motivated to change their behaviour in relation to active travel
• encouraging behaviour change with 19% of people reported they had left the car and walked for short journeys having heard the campaign and a 2% increase in reported walking (from 77 to 79% of respondents) for short journeys of 2 miles or less
• increasing knowledge of walking health benefits with 9% increase in the number of people who identified health benefits from walking more and using the car less for short journeys.

14. Active Travel Case studies

Together with Scottish Natural Heritage and the Central Scotland Green Network, Paths for All have produced a series of case studies that demonstrate how active travel can be promoted by different kinds of organisations in different settings. Each case study tells a different story and demonstrates different approaches to developing active travel. Contact details are provided within each case study so that more detailed information can be sought directly from the people who implemented the project.

These include:

• East Dunbartonshire's Cycle Co-op
• Belles on Bikes
• Urban Freedom's Sustainable Travel Programme
• Make Your Move Kirkcaldy
• Falkirk's Take the Right Move
• Forth Valley Royal Hospital Travel Plan

15. ISM Tool - behaviour change tool (Scottish Government)

Individual Social and Material (ISM) case study three - active travel - walking rather than taking the car for short journeys. In order to inform the national walking strategy, the Scottish Government held an ISM workshop on how to encourage people to walk rather than take the car.

The ISM workshop highlighted the range of national and strategic level policies which promote walking as a form of active travel, including the National Planning Framework (NPF3), and a number of local delivery mechanisms including Local Development Plans and the role of Community Planning Partnerships.

The workshop identified a number of new and/or improved actions to be taken forward, either as part of the Walking Strategy or separately. At national level, a coherent simple message on the benefits of walking for short distances (as part of a wider clear message on activity and health) is required. At the local level, on the ground local infrastructure changes should be combined with information and maps to make it easier for people to make more and different journeys by foot (Individual). In a similar vein, investment decisions in infrastructure should be more joined up at local level in order to encourage active travel.

16. WoW Scotland - Living Streets Scotland

The Living Streets Walk to School (WoW) campaign works with every local authority in Scotland to get more children walking to school. WoW Scotland uses a radical new online monitoring system, enabling primary school children to use interactive whiteboards to record how they travelled to school. Following initial piloting during 2012/13, WoW Scotland was launched at 35 schools in 14 local authorities in October 2013, through funding from Paths for All and Scottish Government.

WoW Scotland's Travel Tracker system is an advanced journey monitoring system. Data on how children travel to school is automatically provided through charts or spreadsheets, enabling rewards for children travelling actively, providing data for cross-curricular learning, such as Maths lessons and building a sense of excitement in the school around the increasing number of active journeys, creating the all-important intra-class or intra-school competition.

"The children just love self-registering each morning on the website and they are excited to see who is the leading class." Principal Teacher,
St Ninian's Primary, Perth

"Children are really engaged and I'm hearing of lots of children changing their habits i.e. cycling / park and stride in order to get a badge." Deputy Head Teacher, Smithton Primary School, Highland

With over 200,000 journeys logged by more than 10,000 pupils, WoW Scotland is getting pupils thinking about they can get more active. Overall, 76% of journeys to school across WoW Scotland schools were by walking or other active travel, a 9.3% increase on baseline and 26% higher than the national average.

17. Travelling Green - Promoting walking to school: results of a quasi-experimental trial

Rosie McKee, Nanette Mutrie, Fiona Crawford, Brian Green
J Epidemiol Community Health 2007

Two primary schools in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, were selected to take part in the study. The schools had a similar demographic profile and were located in two villages roughly 3 miles (5km) apart.

Travelling Green was effective in supporting behaviour change and achieving an increase in the mean distance travelled to school by active mode (walking) and a reduction in the mean distance travelled to school by inactive mode (car). An active travel to school project such as this underpins the core components of the health-promoting school model, i.e. it is integral to the curriculum, school ethos, policies, services, extracurricular activities and partnerships with families and local community.

This study makes an important contribution to the evidence base on effective approaches to promoting physical activity through active travel to school and should be adopted as a model of best practice. Future research should focus on how to assist children and their families to maintain active travel behaviour in the longer term.

18. Newbattle High School - walking in PE

Newbattle High School in Dalkeith, Midlothian, has been very successful in embedding a walking programme into their PE curriculum. Ramblers Scotland worked with Newbattle and are keen to work with other schools to develop similar initiatives and can support schools by mapping routes, providing teaching resources and making links with local Ramblers groups near the school to help children and families walking outside of school time too.

19. Alloa Academy - Walk London

This walking project was for senior pupils that involved them setting targets which had a motivational theme. The aim of the project was to increase physical fitness, but the project also linked to a social studies faculty trip to London in 2009. Each student was provided with a pedometer and, over a period of several months, encouraged to walk the equivalent distance (425 miles) to London by recording their weekly steps.

Staff, both those that took part and those who did not, noticed an overall improvement in behaviour in the students who had been flagged as challenging at the outset of the project.