Duurzaam naar school
The Traffic Snake Game is a campaign developed to encourage walking and cycling to school, with primary school children, parents and teachers being the main target group. All the schools are pursuing the same goal: more safe and sustainable trips to school! As well as playing the game, every participating school is encouraged to organise other activities and lessons concerning traffic and mobility, environmental and health issues.
A campaign to promote walking and cycling to school
The Traffic Snake Game is a fun campaign to promote walking and cycling to school for children (aged 4 – 12), their parents and teachers. The campaign is very simple. Once a school has decided to take part, it needs to identify a two week window in a term time to play the game. During those two weeks, children will be provided with a sustainable mobility sticker to place on a banner each and every time they walk, cycle, use public transport or share a car journey to school.
Support the increase of use of sustainable transport modes
An evaluation of the campaign has shown that it can increase the use of sustainable transport modes and reduce CO2 and other harmful emissions at the school gate. To date, 19 European countries have played the game and have taken advantage of this successful campaign.
The Traffic Snake Game can be played at any point during the academic year, but we would highly recommend that it is played at the same time as European Mobility Week in September. If campaigns take place at the same time all over Europe, this helps to create more momentum. The European Mobility Week represents a perfect overarching opportunity to explain the challenges faced by cities and towns to encourage a change in behaviour and make greater progress towards a more sustainable environment.
Encourage children, parents and teachers to adopt walking, cycling, public transport or car sharing when travelling to and from school
By walking and cycling, children become more aware of their surroundings and develop road safety skills as well as improve their ability to anticipate other users of the road. Furthermore, walking and cycling contributes to the recommended amount of daily exercise that children need. It also reduces congestion and parking pressure in school environment.
The basic Traffic Snake Game campaign can be explained in five simple steps:
1. Setting the target: Two weeks before the game, each school establishes its baseline and sets its own target for behaviour change.
2. Travel sustainable and receive dots: For a period of two campaign weeks, children receive a sustainable mobility sticker for every day they walk, cycle, use public transport or share a car journey to school.
3. Put the dots on the banner: In class, children place the stickers on a larger class sticker. The class sticker is full when the predefined target has been reached. Classes then attach their sticker to the traffic snake banner. The goal is to fill the Traffic Snake Game banner with as many sustainable mobility stickers as possible by the end of the two week playing period. This process can also be done by computer or interactive whiteboard using Traffic Snake Game 2.0.
4. Reward the children: Children receive a reward when they reach key points on the banner. Rewards might include: no homework, an extra 15 minutes playtime or something similar. When the children reach the end of the banner, they can receive an even bigger reward for achieving the goals; a new bicycle shed, a walking or cycling tour or other prizes to enable more sustainable mobility.
5. Measure the impact of the campaign: Three weeks after the game is played, all hands up data from the before, during and after monitoring measurement is collected and analysed.