The Rise of the 'Bike Bus' Movement
The Rise of the 'Bike Bus' Movement
How a Portland teacher is reshaping school commutes in cities across the country
On Earth Day 2022, Sam Balto, a physical education teacher in Portland, convinced a few dozen parents to send their kids to school on their bikes and posted the first in a series of videos that turned his “bike bus” into a viral sensation.
Balto has continued documenting his weekly bike buses with joyous videos that show students rolling to school while he blasts music from an eclectic collection of artists, including AC/DC, Metallica, OneRepublic, and The Isley Brothers.
Over time, these boisterous bike buses have grown to more than 150 kids.
“The more these kids practice riding bikes, the more confident they become and now they want to keep riding on non-bike bus days. Even on rainy days, kids are riding now because they have the gear and they really don't like sitting in their parents' cars,” Balto told Distilled.
Balto’s bike bus is much more than a fad. His TikTok and Twitter videos have raked in millions of views, inspiring similar initiatives in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Utah, Ohio, and Texas. Bike buses previously existed in European cities such as Barcelona and London, but new ones in cities like Cape Town are now joining the trend.
Stephen Heiny, a researcher at the Highway Safety Research Center, told Distilled that walking and biking initiatives have increased after taking a dip during the pandemic when schools moved to virtual learning.
“I don’t know if it is because the one in Portland got a lot of media coverage or because the time is right, but we’re seeing bike buses in many other places,” he said.
Nancy Pullen-Seufert, the director of the National Center for Safe Routes to School told Distilled that biking and walking to school have myriad benefits including “improving air quality, improving safety for walkers and bicyclists, increasing physical activity, improving congestion and making it easier for school buses and others who can’t actively travel to school to arrive to school on time.”
Changing transportation policy
Balto has also triggered real political change by working with lawmakers to pass a so-called “Bike Bus Bill” that was signed into law by Oregon Governor Tina Kotek in August.
“The bill brings flexibility so school districts can now use student transportation funds, which were previously only for school buses, to pay for crossing guards or adults to lead walking school buses or bike buses. It’s awesome,” Balto said.
He is not the only bike bus leader driving positive change in Oregon. Last year, Megan Ramey, who has been organizing a bike bus since 2020, was named the Safe Routes to School Manager at Hood River County School District and since then, she has secured nearly $11 million in funding to make it safer for kids to walk and bike to school.
“I feel like I'm in a cash-grabbing machine. We just got $7 million to create an off-road trail to the high school. This means that my daughter, who is 14, will be able to bike to high school on a green trail instead of a car-centered road,” Ramey told Distilled.
Decarbonizing school transportation
Nearly 90% of kids walked to school in 1969. Half a century later, in 2017, that number had fallen to just 10%. That year, a third of students took the school bus and more than half were driven in a private vehicle.
This has led to more pollution, with researchers finding that toxic car fumes have an adverse effect on attention, reasoning and academic performance among school children.
Advocates are following a two-pronged approach to decarbonize school transportation. On the one hand, they are promoting walking and biking and, on the other, they are reducing pollution near schools by barring motor vehicles from nearby streets at drop off and pick up times and electrifying bus fleets.
Restricting cars near schools can help reduce nitrogen dioxide levels, a harmful pollutant, by up to 23%, a 2021 study found. That’s exactly what many schools in cities such as New York and Seattle began doing during the pandemic.
In New York, the Open Schools Program has helped increase biking and walking in the 65 schools that restricted traffic during drop-off and pick-up times this year, said Sabina Sethi Unni, who works at Open Plans, a non-profit that supports the shift to walkable cities.
“This program makes kids more comfortable with walking and biking at a young age. When they get older, they will be cyclists instead of car users,” Unni told Distilled.
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Yikes. "Nearly 90% of kids walked to school in 1969. Half a century later, in 2017, that number had fallen to just 10%. " Joni Mitchell wrote about paving paradise in 1970 and we still keep getting worse. Many reasons from more traffic, to helicopter parenting, to school consolidation to "school choice" and charter schools to general sub- and ex-urbanization to the rise in expectations for after school activities not on school grounds.
In any case, a worthy endeavor. I was always a street-riding bike-to-schooler, much to the chagrin of some crossing guards who thought I belonged on crosswalks. Learned to stay just off the right rear bumper of that car in front. An early DUI kept me biking through most of high school when others were driving. Turned into a lifelong thing; the biking, not the DUIs.
This is great! I love the concept and reasoning. Back in the day (yes, I grew up in the days of the dinosaurs :-), I lived a mile from my elementary school, and walked both directions every day of the school year. Looking back, that was fabulous for my physical and mental health, led me to love the outdoors, made me thoughtful and contemplative, and taught me the joy of singing (I had no companions for my walk).
By the time my kids went to elementary school, we lived in a different city about a 5 minute walk from school - if there hadn't been a bend in the street, you could have seen it from our house. There were no school buses. So many parents drove their kids to school (including families who lived as close as our house) that I had to walk back and forth with our kids to school for 10 years (it was a K-6 school and we had two children of different ages) because of community opinion which felt that the last crossing of the street was too dangerous for children who walked unescorted, because of the chaotic amount of vehicle traffic going to & from the school. Yet what initially seemed to be a burden, I came to view as a blessing, because it got ME and our dog and our toddler outside and active twice every school day.
Now we live in a new location, and there are school buses. I've seen the local school bus stop and take on and drop off a child (who appears to be physically fit with no mobility issues) from the house NEXT DOOR to the elementary school - a house which literally shares a front yard with the school! How the world has changed. Time to go back to some walking and cycling to school.