Lakehead Board conducts survey on walking distances

Lakehead Public Schools is leaving walking distances for Thunder Bay students for at least another year, after getting mixed results from a survey.

The school board says students and parents were asked whether children and youth should be walking further to school, rather than getting on a bus.

The maximum walking distance now allowed is 1.6 km. That's half the Ontario average maximum for students in grades 9 to 12, according tothe board's business superintendent David Wright.

But Wright said while there was general support for increasing walking distances, the families and students who would be directly affected by the changes didn't like the idea.

"We did get some good feedback that any change in walk distances really should consider extreme temperatures and student safety," Wright said.

"I'm guessing a lot of that was driven by the winter we had," he added. "We did have some pretty extreme temperatures over the last winter."

Results of the survey will be passed on to the Thunder Bay transportation consortium that represents three area school boards.

"They'll take a better look at the infrastructure piece, availability of sidewalks and general hazards and things like that, and what a change in walk distances would actually mean for people," Wright said.

The consortium is doing a review of its policies in the coming year.