Safer Students is Launched!!!

Operation Safer Travel (OST) partners Travel West Midlands, West Midlands Police and the West Midlands Area National Union of Students (WMANUS) are pleased to announce today, the launch of the brand new ’Operation Safer Students’ initiative. Operation Safer Students, launched as a major new sub-brand of OST, aims to improve the quality of bus safety information for students and aims to improve the perception of bus travel in the West Midlands for all students, especially those aged 16-18.Stuart Henry, Corporate Affairs Manager for Travel West Midlands said: "This is an exciting new time for our partnership. Our work in schools over the past few years has given benefits for both the Company and for those involved and I hope that the colleges and students who are to be part of Operation Safer Students will begin to see the real benefits. Information and communication is vital for this initiative as this new brand is designed to raise the profile of both bus safety initiatives and public transport use in general. Students can obviously find an extensive bus network daunting and so Safer Students will help us to improve and promote both the image of bus and metro travel and encourage more students make their journey by public transport."Emma Thompson from West Midlands Police said: "We are working with OST and WMANUS to promote safety on buses travelled on by students attending further education colleges across the region. The initiative will provide crime prevention advice about robbery, funded by the force’s Safer Streets campaign, antisocial behaviour and criminal damage. Whilst work is being done to raise awareness amongst Higher Education students at university, and Operation Trojan - a Force-wide initiative, running from the 4th January, aimed at reducing the number of robberies on buses focuses largely on schools, Safer Students aims to bridge the current gap within the 16-18 year age group."Sarah Griffiths, from WMANUS added: "Using public transport is something the majority of students do every day whilst travelling to and from college. We at WMANUS believe this campaign will educate students in ways to travel safely and respectfully on public transport. As a Student Organisation our main concern is students’ safety, as such we’re delighted to be working alongside West Midlands Police and Travel West Midlands in promoting this campaign."The various focussed initiatives which bring Operation Safer Students together are: local poster campaigns, various branded give-aways for students, special ’roadshows’ in participating colleges, messages on internal TV screens, regular articles in WMANUS magazine ’Collective’, the brand new Safer Students logo, updates on the OST web-site and new information boards in colleges giving more information on general bus and tram use.- ’Operation Safer Students’ was launched on 19th January at Wolverhampton City College.- WMANUS is the ’West Midlands Area for National Union of Students’To find out more about Operation Safer Travel visit www.travelwm.co.uk/ost

Published 20th January 2005