Abstract
BACKGROUND: Active travel (such as walking, cycling and scooting) has a range of benefits for human and planetary health, whereas driving children to school contributes substantially to motor vehicle traffic at peak times. Local governments have collaborated with schools to implement traffic restriction schemes, in which motor vehicle access around schools is restricted at drop-off and pick-up times. We examined the impacts of these schemes on how children travel to school, and how these differed between socio-economic groups, in England and Scotland. METHODS: In this controlled before-and-after natural experimental study, we used data collected by primary schools on children’s mode of travel to school between 2012 and 2023. We matched each intervention school to two control schools based on area-level deprivation, urban–rural status, school size, baseline prevalence of active travel to school, and geographical region. We used fixed-effects regression models to conduct difference-in-difference analyses of the percentage of pupils using active modes of transport and private motor vehicles, adjusting for potential confounding factors. We examined absolute and relative differences and differential effects by stratifying analyses by geographical region, method of enforcement, area-level deprivation, and urban–rural status. RESULTS: We used data from 498 schools (166 intervention and 332 control) at which on average 70% of children travelled to school by active modes at baseline, with no significant difference between intervention and selected control schools (p = 0.79). The proportion of pupils in intervention schools travelling by active modes increased by 5.9 absolute percentage points (95% CI: 2.5 to 9.1), and the proportion travelling by private motor vehicle decreased by 5.3 points (2.5 to 8.2), relative to control schools. The results for relative changes were similar, the patterns were consistent between jurisdictions and no differences were seen in other stratified analyses. CONCLUSION: We found that after primary schools implemented schemes, a greater proportion of children walked, cycled or scooted to school and a smaller proportion were driven. These findings suggest that wider roll-out of these schemes might contribute to promoting active travel in children, and perhaps, to improving health. Improving the availability, quality and consistency of routinely collected data on travel to school would facilitate future research into these schemes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12966-025-01858-w.