’SMART’ move by TWM

Phil Bateman MBE, Corporate Affairs Director Travel West Midlands said today: "Travel West Midlands has a long record of supplying bus services for pupils and students attending schools here in the West Midlands County. More than 30 million passenger journeys are made by pupils travelling to local schools each year. One of the key elements of the service is to ensure that the pupils and students travel safely, and that they do not themselves cause aggravation to other users of the local public transport network. Mr Bateman added "Last year, as in previous years, we have again visited local schools, not just the ones that cause problems on our services, but pro-actively schools who have been anxious to learn how to use our services in a proper way. In three years under the Operation Safer Travel brand more than 100 schools have been visited by the company." Stuart Henry, the Company’s Manager in charge of Safer Travel said "Over these years Travel West Midlands has built upon a number of initiatives and now offers the award-winning ’SMART Schools Project’ to Headteachers. This enables interactive presentations to be made to school children via year groups or classes. We are of course very proud of this development. The ’School Menu’ we offer to Head Teachers is in the following areas:- Question and Answer sessions in morning assemblies- Regular articles and updates in school magazines- Sharing of CCTV evidence and footage taken on buses- Working with school councils- Reward and recognition for encouraging results- Correspondence to /with parents- OST promotional material availability- VIP visits to local TWM bus depots where safe and applicable- The ’Bus Familiarisation Package’ aimed specifically at Year 6 pupils during the summerOver the last three years we have made more than a 100 primary and secondary school visits. The thrust of the visits have been to improve individual safety and pupils awareness when travelling between home and school. So successful has been this scheme been that a sub-brand was launched in January 2005, ’Safer Students’. This new campaign focussed on various initiatives around improving the safety of students when travelling by bus and tram. This new campaign greatly interested other agencies and it was launched in partnership with. Safer Students partners include West Midlands Police and the West Midlands Area for the National Union of Students." Added to this comprehensive attempt to create safer journeys to educational establishments. Travel West Midlands encouraged Black Country Schools through a local newspaper ( Express and Star) and Heart FM in a ’Design an Advertisement’ competition to make children aware of the bus and all that it can do for communities. The working title given to schools for the 2005 competition was ’Don’t Vandalise Your Bus’. Safety was the theme that TWM was encouraging, and the winner 11 year old Ellie Poutney from Corbett Primary School in Stourbridge, who came up with an eye catching poster to highlight bus safety, with the slogan, ’If you’re a Shopper- use it proper!’ Travel West Midlands used this slogan on 50 of its buses operating in the Black Country area. Travel West Midlands remains committed to providing school children and students safe and frequent bus services wherever possible.

Published 27th February 2006