Cycling facilities at school: what solutions are there to encourage active travel?

Cycling facilities for schools play a vital role in promoting active travel. By providing suitable parking solutions, primary and secondary schools can make it easier for pupils, families and teaching staff to travel by bike.

Commuting between home and school is indeed a major challenge for local authorities and schools. Every day, large numbers of pupils, parents, teachers and staff travel to schools.

In this context, developing cycling infrastructure is a practical way of promoting active travel and supporting the transition to more sustainable travel.

Installing suitable cycling facilities helps to meet a key need: providing accessible, well-organised parking spaces that are suited to everyday use.

Why should cycling be encouraged in schools?

Cycling is a particularly suitable mode of transport for everyday journeys. For journeys between home and school, it can help reduce reliance on private cars and encourage more active ways of getting around.

Encouraging cycling from a young age also helps to develop new travel habits. Consequently, for local authorities and schools alike, putting in place suitable infrastructure is therefore essential to making cycling easier and more accessible.

Active travel helps, in particular, to:

• to reduce the number of car journeys made on short routes;
• to encourage daily physical activity;
• to improve the quality of the areas surrounding educational establishments;
• support local sustainable transport policies;
• to raise awareness among younger generations of alternative modes of transport.

Bicycle parking: an essential piece of infrastructure

Encouraging pupils and teaching staff to cycle to school requires providing them with suitable facilities.

A school can therefore incorporate various types of suitable solutions:

Cycle parking should not be regarded as merely an ancillary facility. It constitutes a genuine part of the transport infrastructure, just like the other facilities required for everyday travel.

What cycling facilities should be installed in a school?

The choice of equipment depends on several factors: the number of pupils and staff, the available floor space, the number of visitors to the site and the intended uses.

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Equipment suitable for both primary and secondary schools

Requirements vary depending on the type of school and the pupils or students it caters for. A primary school, a lower secondary school, an upper secondary school or a higher education institution do not necessarily face the same constraints in terms of use, capacity or layout.

Projects carried out in various institutions thus demonstrate the diversity of possible solutions.

At Jean Monnet Secondary School in Saint-Jorioz, Haute-Savoie, the project comprises 7 bespoke ALTAO® Open cycle shelters, 216 cycle spaces on ALTAO® Parco racks and 30 spaces for scooters, making a total of 246 spaces. This project demonstrates how infrastructure can be designed to meet the specific needs of a school. Find out more about the cycle shelters installed at the secondary school in Saint-Jorioz.

The project also demonstrates that a school layout can accommodate a range of uses and different types of vehicles, in order to support the travel patterns of pupils and staff.

Additional equipment: maintaining and repairing your bike

Encouraging cycling is not just about providing cycle parking spaces.

To make cycling easier in everyday life, establishments can also provide bike repair and pump facilities, repair stations or secure parking facilities.

The project ‘Cycling facilities for and by children!’ showcases several examples of facilities designed to encourage cycling from a very young age.

In particular, schools and colleges have been fitted with tyre-inflation stations, repair points and secure parking facilities. This equipment can also be customised or incorporated into educational projects, to encourage pupils to take ownership of the facilities.

Designing a cycle park suitable for school use

Effective cycling kit should be easily accessible and intuitive.

There are several factors that need to be taken into account when designing the project.

1. Location

The location of the cycle parking facility is crucial. It must be easily accessible from the building’s entrances, whilst ensuring that pedestrian flows are well organised.

2. Capacity

The number of spaces must be tailored to current needs, whilst anticipating the growth in cycling.

3. Safety

The facilities must allow bicycles to be secured conveniently and help to minimise the risk of damage or theft.

4. Protection

In the case of a covered shelter, bicycles are protected from the elements, which makes them more convenient to use on a day-to-day basis.

5. Integration into the environment

Bicycle parking facilities must blend in harmoniously with the surroundings of the premises and with the public or private spaces surrounding them.

Example: 15 cycle shelters installed at schools in Noisy-le-Grand

Example: 15 cycle shelters installed at schools in Noisy-le-Grand

In Noisy-le-Grand, 15 ALTAO® Curve cycle shelters have been installed at several schools to support the development of active travel.

The project comprises:

• 12 bicycle shelters, each 4.2 m long;
• 3 bicycle shelters, each 8.4 m long;
• 110 U-shaped hoops.

This project provides a practical example of how cycle parking facilities can be rolled out across several schools to make cycling easier and support journeys between home and school.

Take a look at the project: 15 cycle shelters for schools in Noisy-le-Grand.