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Cambridge school uses technology to encourage students back on the bus and reduce congestion in the city
Stephen Perse Foundation carried out a trial earlier this year and is now rolling out a new programme that it says will “ultimately reduce the number of cars travelling to and from the school in the city centre”.
Technology is being used by a Cambridge school to make is easier for students to get there by bus and reduce dependency on parents using cars. Stephen Perse Foundation says it is now rolling out its innovative solution after bringing in a specialist company to provide “safer, greener, smarter school travel” for its students.
The school has teamed up with Kura, a company that uses technology to map routes and plan school travel options, to come up with a fully managed transport service.
Stephen Perse Foundation carried out a trial earlier this year and is now rolling out a new programme that it says will “ultimately reduce the number of cars travelling to and from the school in the city centre”.
It works like this.
Kura has mapped and recorded the most and least frequently taken routes by Stephen Perse Foundation students in Cambridge. Based on this data, Kura devised an improved route system that focuses on servicing the most heavily congested areas, ensuring efficiency and reliability for students and parents alike.
It means parents can swop cars to take their children to school by using a bus option that can be managed through a booking service mobile app or web portal, enabling them to review, change and cancel journeys with flexibility and convenience.
Additionally, real-time vehicle tracking and messaging features on the app keep parents, students, and school authorities well-informed in the event of unexpected traffic delays.
Chris Woodey, head of sustainability at Stephen Perse Foundation said: “Through our partnership with Kura our community has an exciting opportunity to reduce congestion in our beloved city, while improving air quality and benefitting from the peace of mind that trackable travel provides helping parents to manage their own travel arrangements and improving the school’s safeguarding provision.
“This initiative marks the first in a planned series of sustainability improvements for our schools, as we start to look into how to help our families make fewer environmentally impactful school journeys.
“Our long-term goal is to review the operations of our entire footprint and implement micro and macro improvements to our sustainability practices. We are grateful to our community of parents and students and the wider city of Cambridge for supporting us in this shared journey.”
Godfrey Ryan, CEO at Kura, said: “Kura is delighted to form a school transport partnership with Stephen Perse Foundation.
“By optimising the bus route network, we will help reduce the foundation’s carbon footprint and reduce the number of cars on Cambridge’s congested roads.
“Our proprietary vehicle and pupil tracking software provides peace of mind for parents and saves school staff valuable management time. As we believe in breaking down the barriers to safer and greener transport, earlier this year we made our Essential software plan available to any school completely free, forever.”
To learn more about Stephen Perse Foundation, please visit: https://www.stephenperse.com/.
About Kura
Kura’s purpose is to enable safer, greener smarter travel for all UK schools and businesses. Combining leading edge proprietary technology with the best local vehicle operators nationwide, Kura enables organisations to maximise the safety, wellbeing, and productivity of their students and staff, whilst driving down transport costs and CO2 emissions – ridekura.com
