Encouraging young people to travel by more active and sustainable modes is a goal for many us. And the shift to walking and cycling will also help reduce dependence on motorised traffic, easing congestion and improving air quality around our schools and local communities.
Despite the desire of parents, young people, schools and travel planners it can still be hard to achieve the switch. One of the challenges is ensuring that families feel confident to allow independent and active travel and that is where RouteGuard comes in.
RouteGuard is a great way to encourage parents and carers to actively engage with their young people, planning routes and agreeing the boundaries for safe and independent travel. RouteGuard involves pairing an app on the parent's phone with an app on the young person's device, then they can mark up a series of safe zones which might be home, school, friends' houses and after school activities.
By signing up your local authority and promoting RouteGuard to your schools, we hope you find that you can encourage pupils to be more active and their parents to be more confident as they begin to travel independently. And what is more, RouteGuard doesn't cost you anything.
After working with advisors in local authority education teams, we wanted to limit access to the app to people who received an organisation code from their school. This helps to ensure that the app is only offered to people with a legitimate reason to be doing travel planning with young people. So, when your schools sign-up, they will be issued with a unique code that they can pass to parents in their school community.
We have created a handy Walkthrough Guide to help you navigate the site and create your account. Please download it here.