Transport planning may soon pay more attention to children

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that children must be included in all decisions taken, such as those when planning new schools and the traffic around them. Yet their perspectives are often lost in the planning process. VTI is running a project that aims to develop methodological support for municipalities that want to make way for more child perspectives in planning work.

Four years ago, the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child became an integral part of Swedish law. This means we have a duty to integrate children’s opinions, perspectives and interests in all decisions taken. Urban and transport planning are areas where it is most important that children are included.

VTI’s Senior Researcher Malin Henriksson explains, ‘Children should be able to walk and cycle places independently. However, research has shown that over the past two or three decades, children have been travelling more by car and they are cycling less. There are a number of reasons for this; generally, car use is increasing throughout society, many children live further away from their schools, and parents increasingly believe that traffic environments are unsafe.

Together with Senior Research Leader at VTI, Sonja Forward, she is running a Vinnova-financed project focusing on children as a guide, a method to include children's perspectives in the planning process. Consultancy company Ramboll are also participating in the project.

‘It is a small, yet significant project in which we are trying to understand why children's perspectives often disappear in planning processes. It will result in decision-making support that will help municipalities and other organisations with working to include children and draw on their opinions and interests’.

As part of the project, they have chosen to look at municipal planning work in more detail, as this is where important decisions are taken on where schools are built and how the traffic around them should be operated. Many municipalities use child impact analyses, BKA, but there are other ways of working. Ultimately, there must be politicians that take children's perspectives seriously when the time comes to take decisions.

During the spring, they interviewed transport planners and politicians in three municipalities, each with varying experience of working with children's perspectives.

‘We wanted to see when a child’s perspective comes in, and why it often disappears later on in the process. Unfortunately, the final result is often towns and traffic environments that are not well-suited to children in terms of their need to play, be active and travel freely. This may be due to poorly-located schools with a shortage of space for playgrounds, too much car traffic, and too few shared-use paths for bikes and pedestrians.

A key problem is that we have densely populated cities where many things need to be accommodated for, and this often conflicts with the child’s perspective. It is difficult to fit schools and preschools into limited spaces while simultaneously creating access for various modes of transport such as bicycles, pedestrians and cars. This can easily result in sacrificing green spaces, or building schools where the playgrounds are too small.

‘Nobody thinks that children being able to get around safely or being able to play in parks and playgrounds is unimportant. But there are many factors that need to be taken into account’.

The freedom to choose a child’s school has created new problems. More pupils live further away from their schools and are being driven through neighbourhoods that have been planned around children walking and cycling.

Many secondary and upper-secondary schools are concerned about the increasing number of quadricycles and A-tractors – vehicles that have been modified to have a maximum speed of 30 km/h, and can be driven from the age of 15. Creating parking spaces for these vehicles requires taking spaces away from other things; spaces that could have been used as playgrounds are instead asphalted over.

‘Schools must be supported to take uncomfortable decisions on car-free environments. Car access is not always the most important, but it may be difficult for many parents to accept this. Children’s needs must be put first. Being driven around is not in their best interest – they want to and need to move in environments where they are safe from traffic’.

Malin Henriksson and Sonja Forward have noticed how children are often brought into the planning process late on, when the major decisions have already been taken. This criticism applies for many consultation processes. Municipalities may say they have spoken to children, but in reality their opinions have a relatively low impact. There is much room for improvement here.

‘At VTI, we provide the research foundation. We create documentation and knowledge that indicate where there are issues and how we can solve them. Ramboll contributes the practical elements by developing methodological support. We would really like to continue and test our method, but this requires more project funding,’ Malin Henriksson concludes.

Text: Johan Sievers/Redakta

Translation: CBG