Research has found disparities between areas are not due to population size, but are more to do with differences in educational provision, writes Associate Professor J. M. Mancini of the Department of History
     

    Imagine you are stuck in traffic on your morning commute into Dublin. You hear an advertisement on the radio promoting walking and cycling. You think, 'that’s a brilliant idea'. Active transport is good for health, the climate and easing traffic congestion.

    But then, you see a car in front of you with teenagers being driven to school. In that scenario, would you be tempted to blame the traffic on those teenagers in the car? Would you assume that they could walk to school if they wanted to, if they would only change their behaviour? And would you assume that it was a matter of choice, because surely all teenagers in urban areas are provided with local schools on an equal basis?

    If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, your responses would be in keeping with a lot of Irish policy in this area, which (as my new research shows) frequently proposes ‘behavioural change interventions’ as the key to achieving higher participation in active transport. They would also be in line with much existing academic research, which provides the context for such policy.

    This existing research claims, without considering the location of schools, that adolescent active transport (AT) follows population size and density – proposing that adolescent active transport is highest in the largest and most densely-populated cities, decreases with the size of cities and towns and is lowest in settlements with fewer than 5000 people. It also claims that distance and time to school, while being the greatest barriers to walking and cycling, are factors that are ‘constant and cannot be changed’.

    But neither of these assumptions are borne out by data from Census 2016 and 2011 (which, until Census 2022 is fully published and analysed, are the largest sources of data on teenage commuting to education). First, ‘time to school’ is not fixed but has changed significantly in some places where the state has built new schools, such as Donabate. In the Donabate Electoral Division, the average journey times fell from 26.2 to 15.7 minutes between 2011 and 2016 with the opening of Donabate Community College.

    Second, there was no link between population size or density and adolescent active transport across Ireland's 200 towns and cities with a population of 1,500 or more. On the contrary, the highest teenage level of active transport was not in Dublin (which at 39.87% was ranked 88th of 200 towns and cities when it comes to active transport) but in the smaller town of Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath which had an active transport rate of 74.71% from a population of 4,035.

    Even across similarly-sized towns, teenagers experienced wildly disparate outcomes depending on where they lived. In 31 small towns (1,500-5,000 population), a majority of teenagers commuted by walking or cycling, with 26 making the national Top 40. However in 31 other small towns, including Duleek, Co. Meath (population 4219; active transport rate of 0.55%) fewer than 5% of 13 to 18 year old students walked or cycled to school – with no teenagers at all commuting by these methods in three small towns.

    This active transport ‘postcode lottery’ also affected teenagers inside Dublin. In some Dublin electoral divisions such as Clonskeagh-Belfield, teenagers participated in active transport at a similar level as in Dunshaughlin. However in other divisions, teenagers had much lower odds of walking or cycling (for example, fewer than 12% of teenagers in Kilmainham B).

    Obviously, such disparities cannot be attributed to differences in population size or density, but they can be associated with differences in educational provision. Consider this: 38 of the 40 towns with the lowest teenage levels of cycling and walking had no secondary school. However in the Top 40, every town had a school within its settlement boundary and at least one of those schools was free, mixed-gender and inter- or multi-denominational in 38 of those 40 towns. In other words, active transport does not follow population size or density, but it does follow educational provision, including the provision of ‘inclusive’ schools not segregated by religion, gender, or the ability to pay.

    Why, then, are teenagers nearly twice as likely to commute to school by walking or cycling in Dunshaughlin as in Dublin? Or, put another way, why are teenagers in Dunshaughlin six times more likely to walk or cycle to school than teenagers in Kilmainham B?

    We know where the teenagers with poor commuting outcomes are - despite living in compact, urban settlements

    Educational provision is undoubtedly part of the answer. In 2016, Dunshaughlin had a local secondary school that was inter-denominational, mixed-gender and free. Moreover according to the Department of Education, the Dunshaughlin School Planning Area had a secondary-to-primary ‘intake ratio’ of 146.2% – indicating that the secondary schools could accommodate many more pupils than attended primary schools there. In contrast, in the Dublin 8 School Planning Area (the area which Kilmainham B is in), the ‘intake ratio’ was 43% and there were no schools that were not segregated by religion, gender or both.

    This may seem like a bad news story, but it isn’t entirely. Unlike many problems, it has a solution. We know where the teenagers with poor commuting outcomes are - despite living in compact, urban settlements. We won’t improve those outcomes by blaming teenagers, but we can do so by building inclusive, local schools where they are lacking.

    This piece originally appeared on RTÉ Brainstorm. You can also listen to this as a Brainstorm podcast.