Ms Colette Murphy:

Students who have come to major towns and cities and have moved into student accommodation are generally located close to campus. It is a perfect opportunity for universities and the Department to roll out a cycle to college scheme. If students starting college are supported to get into the habit of cycling to college, that is a habit they can build for life. If they instead start driving or using public transport, their carbon footprint will be a lot higher. If students move to a new place and form that habit, it will be a lot more difficult to break. The Deputy mentioned the cycle to school initiatives. One-week initiatives are tokenistic, but they work. A lot of colleges organise bike clinics, which really work. I would like to see them in every institution in the country. They encourage students to maintain their bikes. It would be great to have the introduction of a scheme to encourage people to use bikes in the first place.

Obviously, there is a bike to work scheme but not everyone is working when they start college at 18. It would help with that transition. In addition, it would be of assistance if public transport were free of charge because it would be further incentive-----