On Thursday 22^nd September 2022, Garden Suburb Junior School encouraged all families to go car-free to mark World Car Free Day. On this day, people all around the world make the decision to find alternate travel methods for their daily commutes to encourage more active travel and to provide streets free of motor traffic.

Thank you to all the families who pledged to go car-free.

Here are five ways our city will improve if it starts putting people before cars:

1. Less air and noise pollution. When Paris’ city centre went car-free in 2015, levels of nitrogen dioxide dropped by up to 40% in parts of the city, and sound levels dropped by half in the city centre.
2. More space for living — not traffic. Freeing up roads from traffic makes more room for parks, squares, and community life. Green spaces can also welcome back some of our lost urban biodiversity.
3. Better infrastructure for active transport: Walking, bicycling, skateboarding, rollerblading, and other forms of active transport are good for our bodies and the planet. Less space for cars means more space for bike lanes and safe pedestrian infrastructure on our streets.
4. More money left for better, renewable energy-powered public transport. Building and maintaining roads for cars costs a lot of money! Shifting that investment over to sustainable transport means we can have the same convenient mobility without the carbon footprint.
5. Cooling the planet. Getting rid of roads and reducing pollution-emitting cars will help us cool the planet. Parks instead of heat-absorbing roads and concrete would help reduce urban heat islands, and generally make our cities cooler places to live.