The Board of Mayor and Aldermen in Herzele, Flanders, decided to extend the school street at the Sint-Paulus Institute. The interim evaluation of traffic intensities before, during and after the school street - carried out as part of COMPAIR - indicated positive effects. Furthermore, the predominantly positive responses in the residents' survey and the advice from the local police also led to this decision. The pilot project with the school street in Burgemeester Matthysstraat will be extended from September 1 to mid-December 2023.
This extension offers the opportunity to investigate this in more detail using the Telraam measurements. For example, the possible shift of traffic from the school street to the Burchtstraat and the Graaf du Parclaan will be examined and a longer period of air quality measurements appeared to be necessary to arrive at correct insights.
Part of the analysis will be done with a web tool demonstrated during the school street café. The analysis can now be accessed publicly at the COMPAIR Policy Monitoring Dashboard. When the air quality measurements are available, they will appear on the dashboard, too.
Finally, Burgemeester Matthysstraat is no longer the only school street in Herzele. Based on the positive experience with the first school street, the municipal council has started a second pilot project in the sub-municipality of Steenhuize aan de Kloosterberg (VBS Sint-Katrien). Read more about it on this page (in Dutch).