{"id":1598,"date":"2024-07-01T15:58:45","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T15:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/?p=1598"},"modified":"2024-07-02T09:48:02","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T09:48:02","slug":"school-streets-ata-podcast-20242","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/school-streets-ata-podcast-20242\/","title":{"rendered":"School Streets: ATA podcast 2024:2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Listen to the podcast episode<\/a> or download the transcript<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this latest episode, ATA Reader in Transport Dr. Tom Cohen interviews Dr. Asa Thomas, who recently completed his PhD thesis on School Streets at Westminster University with the ATA, funded by Cross River Partnership. School Streets are interventions that restrict driving on streets near to schools at the start and the end of the school day. They have been introduced widely in London and increasingly in other parts of the UK, and related policies have been followed in other cities such as Paris and Barcelona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Asa
Dr. Asa Thomas<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Asa started his PhD in January 2020, just a couple of months before the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. For him and many other PhD students, many previously made plans were no longer possible. Everything was turned upside down, and PhD life changed dramatically. For Asa, Covid-19 meant that his object of study changed dramatically too. School Streets suddenly became part of ’emergency’ active travel measures, implemented initially to support physical distancing and then also increasingly in an attempt to avert a car-based recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
School Street, Comber Grove, Southwark, London<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The methods that Asa ended up using generated a rich set of diverse data. It included data from Transport for London on how pupils said they travelled to school, at schools which did and did not get School Streets. There was also sensor data via Hackney, a Cross River Partnership partner authority, providing information on walking and cycling at specific locations in that borough. Alongside this wealth of quantitative data, Asa collected primary data himself from online stakeholder interviews, mostly with local authority officers implementing these measures in London. He also worked with Mums for Lungs and Sustrans to gather data on where school streets had been implemented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, his final thesis includes information about the distribution of School Streets, their impacts on walking and cycling to school, and the processes surrounding their implementation from the perspective of those involved. It is a fascinating project which has already led to a chapter in an open access book<\/a>, an open access article in high impact journal Transportation Research D: Transportation and Environment<\/a>, a report for climate action charity Possible<\/a>, and many presentations!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen to the podcast episode or download the transcript. In this latest episode, ATA Reader in Transport Dr. Tom Cohen interviews Dr. Asa Thomas, who recently completed his PhD thesis on School Streets at Westminster University with the ATA, funded…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1598"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1613,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598\/revisions\/1613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}