A brand new synthetic intelligence (AI) platform developed with assist from the Division for Transport is being piloted as a possible answer to one of many UK’s most entrenched transport challenges: the college run.
The proportion of pupils being pushed to high school in England has risen by 23% since 2005, with 37% now travelling by automotive as an alternative of strolling, biking, or utilizing public transport. On the identical time, the variety of youngsters strolling to high school has dropped by round 4%. The morning college run now accounts for almost 30% of peak-time site visitors in London and is a rising contributor to congestion and emissions throughout the nation.
The STEP platform
The brand new instrument, often called STEP (Faculty Journey Engagement Platform), has been created by the UK-based start-up HomeRun. It makes use of anonymised postcode knowledge, mixed with behavioural, social, and geographical elements, to foretell how pupils journey to high school. By making use of AI at scale, STEP can reveal the place automotive dependency is highest, which routes are unsafe, and the place funding in strolling, biking, or public transport may have the largest influence.
HomeRun’s goal is to chop the proportion of pupils being pushed to high school from 37% at the moment to below 10% by 2035 — the equal of eradicating 650 million automotive journeys over the following decade.
Not like conventional college journey plans, which require surveys and the cooperation of overstretched headteachers, the platform permits councils and authorities departments to plan interventions at county and even nationwide degree with out the executive burden falling on colleges.
Essex pilot
Essex County Council (ECC) was the primary authority to pilot STEP. With just one officer beforehand accountable for 520 colleges throughout the county, ECC was restricted to working with round 35 colleges per yr. Utilizing STEP, the council was in a position to mannequin journey patterns for over 210,000 pupils throughout all 520 state colleges.
The ensuing knowledge has been used to underpin a significant funding bid for 30 new Faculty Streets, which prohibit automotive entry throughout drop-off and pick-up instances. If profitable, this may characterize one of many largest Faculty Streets rollouts in England outdoors London.
Helen Akpabio, Energetic Journey Supervisor at ECC, famous that the instrument permits interventions to be primarily based on want fairly than the keenness of parent-teacher associations or particular person workers: “For the primary time, all colleges are assessed on a degree taking part in discipline. Interventions will be targeted the place they’re most wanted, not simply the place engagement is most responsive”.
Broader implications
The college run has lengthy been missed in nationwide transport methods. With native authorities spending greater than £2 billion yearly on statutory home-to-school transport for SEND college students alone, many councils have scaled again wider college transport provision to the naked minimal.
Whereas some city councils have launched Faculty Streets in recent times, these are sometimes concentrated in quieter residential areas. Colleges positioned on primary roads or in rural areas have largely missed out. Marketing campaign teams akin to Inexperienced Faculty Runs and Clear up the Faculty Run argue that platforms like STEP may assist councils and communities take a extra equitable, evidence-led method.
The significance of tackling the college run was recognised on 2 July 2025, when the mayors of England’s Mixed Authorities signed a nationwide pledge to prioritise strolling, wheeling, and biking, with a selected concentrate on the college journey. Nonetheless, campaigners and native authorities warn that with out strong knowledge instruments, councils threat “spending restricted funds blindly”.
Wanting forward
HomeRun’s CEO, Pooya Kamvari, stated that if the Essex outcomes have been replicated nationally, the UK may see a dramatic shift at school journey habits:
- A discount of 650 million automotive journeys
- Important cuts in congestion and peak-time emissions
- More healthy, extra lively journey selections for households
The corporate is looking on the federal government to assist councils in adopting a data-led method by:
- Creating a nationwide college run technique
- Funding nationwide use of STEP and comparable instruments
- Incentivising councils to put money into interventions with measurable influence
- Requiring non-public and impartial colleges to take part, reflecting their disproportionate contribution to high school run site visitors
- Supporting new instruments just like the STEP Father or mother Portal to present households personalised journey options
Campaigners say that after a long time of rising automotive dependency, AI-driven platforms may lastly present the intelligence wanted to reshape some of the cussed parts of UK transport.
