In 2023, Essex County Council (ECC) partnered with HomeRun to pilot the School Travel Evaluation Platform (STEP) as part of the Innovate UK-funded Essex Innovate programme. This initiative aimed to revolutionise the understanding and management of school travel by leveraging data-driven insights.

Key objectives:

• Data-Driven Insights: Replace manual school engagement with automated, ML-driven journey modeling.
  

• Equitable Investment: Identify areas with the highest potential for sustainable travel interventions.
  

• Cost-Effective Solutions: Optimize resource allocation by targeting interventions where they would have the most impact.
  

  
  

Implementation

The pilot encompassed 528 schools, analyzing over 217,000 pupil journeys. STEP utilized over 40 parameters to model each journey, providing ECC with a comprehensive view of travel patterns without the need for direct school involvement.

Outcomes

• Enhanced Targeting: Identified specific schools and regions where interventions like walking buses or cycling programs would be most effective.

• Resource Optimization: Enabled ECC to allocate funding more efficiently, focusing on areas with the highest potential for change.

• Scalability: Demonstrated the feasibility of scaling the approach across other regions without significant additional costs.