The ‘BusIt2School’ project was aimed at school children who are typically driven to school (and for whom walking and cycling are not practical) to learn and experience using the bus with the intention of changing long term travel behaviour. Over the course of the project, Meath County Council worked with three schools in Navan located close to and/or along the town bus network to encourage greater use of the bus service as a means of getting to and from school.

The project aimed to promote the health, economic, sustainability and environmental benefits of bus travel, helping students and their families to build confidence in public transport as being a safe and efficient way to travel to/from school. While the programme did not produce a large-scale shift in daily school commuting patterns, the final evaluation report outlines how the project succeeded in generating meaningful behaviour change beyond the school commute, with substantial increases in bus use for leisure and non-school journeys, alongside a marked shift from travelling with parents to travelling with friends.

The BusIt2School project forms part of the Department of Transport Pathfinder Programme of sustainable mobility demonstrator projects. The Pathfinder Programme was designed to capture learnings from creative and innovative projects across the country so they can be replicated and scaled up elsewhere.