Saving the children step by step

Roger Mackett

Fear that children may be abducted or run over walking to school is starting to be outweighed by concern about health threats from inactivity, says a visiting British transport expert.

Roger Mackett, professor of transport studies at University College London, said in Auckland yesterday that he could understand parental anxiety about the risks of letting children walk unsupervised.

"But the chances of your child being abducted are negligible," he told the Herald.

On the other hand, cloistering children at home with computer games and then driving them to school may prove more hazardous in the long-run, in terms of health threats such as diabetes and heart disease.

He believed publicity about obesity was starting to drive the message through to many parents, and the advent of "walking school buses" was helping to overcome fears for their children's safety.

Professor Mackett is attending a two-day Auckland Regional Transport Authority symposium on "sustainable" school travel, to which he yesterday presented findings of a three-year study of children's activity patterns using electronic motion sensors.

The attachable sensors, measuring movements in three dimensions of 195 youngsters aged 10 to 13, found walking burned off nearly as many calories as organised ball games but unrestricted play was the best exercise.

Children at play burned off an average of 2.2 calories a minute, compared with 1.7 at sports clubs or lessons, and just 0.6 sitting about at home.

The professor said children tended to be more active while at other people's houses, and any trip out - including by car - would almost certainly be better for them in terms of physical activity than being at home.

"Children are least active when they are home - hence they should be encouraged to be out of the home more."

He said children who walked to school or elsewhere tended to be more active in everything they did, and exerted more energy on the sports field than those driven there by car.

Professor Mackett said a survey of children in his native Hertfordshire who switched from being driven to school to walking buses found them walking on average an extra 1549m a day, taking 22 minutes to do so.

This amounted to almost two hours of extra physical activity a week.

But he acknowledged a difficulty in retaining parental volunteers meant a decline in walking buses in Hertfordshire from their 2002 heyday.

This was in contrast to Auckland, where the regional authority reports a steady growth in patronage to 180 walking bus routes.


Legging it

* The Auckland region has 180 walking bus routes.
* That number could grow by 60 new routes each year.
* More than 3000 children use walking buses in the region.
* Auckland City Council says numbers within its boundaries have risen 40 per cent to about 1500 in the past year.