When you’re raising a kid in a city, there are all sorts of things you need to know about – like how good the schools are or how many big green spaces you can happily let them loose in. But above all, you’ll probably want to be reassured that they’ll be safe walking its streets and crossing its roads. Clean Cities Campaign, a NGO focused on eco-friendly transport, has you covered.
The charity analysed the number of school streets (streets where walking and cycling are prioritised and vehicles are limited), the roads with safe driving speeds and the protected cycling infrastructure of 36 European cities to determine which have the most child friendly streets.
At number eight, Bristol was the only UK city to make it into the top 10. That said, it didn’t have a particularly high score. Bristol was given an overall score of 48 percent, with just 11 percent for school streets and seven percent for protected cycling infrastructure. The thing that made the city stand out – and earned it a place in the top 10 – was its safe driving speeds which Clean Cities awarded a score of 80 percent.
Bristol began introducing a city-wide 20mph speed limit in 2010 and finished rolling it out in 2015. At the time, Bristol City Council said that the limit ‘encourages more considerate driving, leading to safer streets for all road users, including motorists, cyclists’ and added that ‘the lower speeds reduce the risk and severity of road collisions’. It now has more than 1,100km of road network (out of 1,458km) where the 20mph limit applies.
There’s plenty of room for improvement though. When its comes to protected cycling infrastructure, the report said that the UK as a whole still falls behind the rest of Europe with ‘even its more ambitious cities like London and Bristol struggling due to the prevalence of unprotected cycle lanes and a lack of political ambition.’
Find out which European city was named the most kid-friendly of all here.
ICYMI: This surprising UK city is the most dangerous for cyclists.
Plus: This is best place to live in England, apparently
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