Car Free Day: imagining a less car-dependent future for children
Today is World Car Free Day. From Newcastle to Great Yarmouth to London, public spaces are going car-free, providing a chance instead for communities to socialise and children to play.
The sight and sound of children playing is a common thread running through car free days. Close a street to traffic, and you can be sure that scooters and trikes will be ridden, spacehoppers will be bounced, bubbles will be blown, and tarmac will be chalked all the colours of the rainbow.
Car-dependence harms children. Tragically, 2,432 children were killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads last year, with a disproportionate number of them living in deprived areas. Meanwhile, traffic discourages families from walking, wheeling and cycling. Parked cars take up space that was once used for play. Air pollution and sedentary lifestyles harm children’s health. Climate change threatens their future.
Car free days help us imagine a different, less car-dependent future for our children. To make that future real, a range of measures are needed. Lower speed limits have been clearly shown to reduce child casualties. London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone has allowed children’s lungs to recover and grow. We need more measures like this.
We also need good, affordable public transport, so that everyone – including families, children and young people – can access opportunities.
In August this year, for one month, the Government made bus journeys free for children in England. The full impact is not yet known, but individual bus companies report extraordinary results. There was a 406 per cent increase in children travelling on Carousel Buses in August 2026 compared to August 2025, for instance, and a 301 per cent increase on Pulhams buses.
As well as helping families save money, measures like this help to build habits in young people. My own 13-year-old son caught the bus with a group of friends for the first time in August – ‘Why not?’ they all agreed – ‘It’s free!’
Elsewhere, we see other successful initiatives to help young people travel by public transport. In Scotland, under-22s travel by bus for free all year round. Lucerne in Switzerland gives a public transport voucher to all schoolchildren, worth 300 francs (£270). In Lisbon, Portugal, students aged up to 23 travel free on the metro, buses, most rail lines and the city’s iconic yellow trams.
Travel habits are changing, with fewer young people learning to drive. In the early 1990s, 48 per cent of 17 to 20-year-olds in the UK held a full driving licence. Now, that figure is 32 per cent. This may be good news for traffic and pollution levels, but it is vitally important that it does not lead to young people being less able to access opportunities. That means the alternatives to driving need to be better.
The Transport Select Committee (a group of MPs that advises the Government on transport matters) is looking into just this subject. It is running an inquiry entitled ‘Getting to work: transport connecting young people to jobs and training’.
The inquiry is examining how transport issues can act as a barrier to young people finding, taking up and remaining in employment or training, and what can be done to make things better.
If you have relevant views or experiences, we’d like to hear from you. We will be responding to the Transport Select Committee’s inquiry, and we’d like to include plenty of real-life examples. You may be a young person yourself, or perhaps these issues are affecting your child or another young person in your acquaintance. If so, please fill in our short form.
Inspired by World Car Free Day, let’s make sure our children and young people can play, thrive, and get where they need to go, in a less car-dependent world.
