Monitoring
57. Although one of the purposes of the pilots is
to address these problems, we have heard that local authorities
do not monitor congestion around schools. Hampshire County Council
said that "there is some difficulty in knowing exactly how
to monitor this. We are awaiting guidance from the Department
for Transport on how to measure congestion."[95]
Surrey County Council told us that because people's travel habits
are very complicated they do not "have monitoring off to
a fine art at all."[96]
The only form of monitoring done by schools seems to be the "hands-up"
survey,[97] which may
not show the degree of change with any accuracy. The child who
joined a walking bus one morning a week would have changed its
habits for 10% of its journeys, but this might not be picked up
at all in such a survey, or might be recorded as a total change.
Since monitoring has costs, local authorities may decide to limit
the amount of monitoring they carry out. It is essential that
the effects on congestion of the pilot schemes are monitored.
It is far from clear how schemes will be evaluated when local
authorities say that they do not monitor congestion around schools
or indeed know how to measure it. This must be part of the assessment
of schemes' success.
58. However, reductions in traffic congestion around
schools alone cannot be taken as a simple indicator of success.
It was pointed out to us that a road that has no delay for motor
vehicles may be impossible to cross on foot and so delay and inconvenience
pedestrians and cyclists.[98]
Any congestion performance indicators that are developed should
include all modes of transport, and should measure the effects
of change on pedestrians and cyclists.
93 
