CrankyOne

What K-12 schools in the U.S. have achieved high modal shares of bicycling? What have been the elements to their achieving this? Based on evidence from other schools, what should schools do to achieve high rates of bicycling?

hohum

Are you writing a whitepaper or something?

I doubt few if any school districts track that information. Good luck with your research.

CrankyOne

Not really. We're looking at trying to increase bicycling in our school district. Officially we bus anyone more than 1 mile away and theoretically those within 1 mile should be walking or bicycling. Reality is that we bus people who are closer, like about 0.8 miles away and half of those not bused are driven to school (or drive themselves for some high school).

If we can reduce bus service to only those more than 2.5 miles away we'll cut about $3.2mm out of our current $5.3mm transportation budget. That's significant and a savings we'll see every year.

We've had increasing problems with congestion due to how many kids are being driven. We want to reduce that. There is also a pollution aspect to this due to people idling their cars (and buses) while waiting on kids.

Finally is the hope of increased health and academic performance.

berner

There is a grammar school here very close to the bike path. Many kids use the bike path to get to the school. When I ride my bike past the school I count about 60 0r more bikes. I believe bike use is due to the proximity of the bike path and quiet streets with a good sidewalk so that parents feel their kids are safe. Although the bake path is not my favorite place to ride, it does promote unanticipated uses. If you build it, they will come.

CrankyOne

Can you share the name of the school or PM me?

SkyDog75

Depending on where you live, busing rules and distances may be mandated by state law. For example, New York state law dictates that bus service be offered to elementary school students who reside two miles or more from their school and secondary students who reside three miles or more from their school. (I believe there may be some exceptions, such as for students in New York City.)

The state defines minimums, but local school districts can set their own policies so long as those minimums are met. My local school district offers bus service to elementary students who live one mile or more from school, middle school students who reside more than 1.5 miles away from school, and high school students who reside over two miles away. (All distances are calculated by the shortest road distance.) The district will also provide busing to elementary school students if their walk to school would include crossing a four-lane highway, a bridge over a major waterway, or having to walk along a busy road with no sidewalk or shoulder.

I'd say our district's bicycle use is low-to-moderate during the fall and late spring when there's no chance of snow. Bicycle use during the winter and early spring is very low because of snow, ice, and lousy road conditions (salt, cinders, sludge, etc.). So long as potential bike routes to school are along city streets and subject to winter road conditions, I don't foresee our bicycle usage ever being higher during snowy months.

I-Like-To-Bike

I took these pictures of the bike rack at the James Madison Middle School located about a mile from my house. It had an enrollement of about 330 students 3-8th grade. It was closed about two years ago and the students now go to a school about three miles from my home. I don't know what their bike racks look like. The James Madison racks were always crowded from April thru October when school was open.
Good sidewalks, and relatively quiet streets contributed to student participation in biking to school as well as no helmet obsessions by local school officials or parents.

Chris516

That effort, is semi-subjective. Those confined to a wheelchair or walker, still need to go on the bus. Because I think they would not be able to use a recumbent bike. Even if it was adapted for hand pedals. But the general effort is still worthy.

randomgear

Many of the k-12 schools in Cambridge, MA have good ridership in the warmer months. Decent bike lanes, good sidewalks, plenty of bike racks at schools, quite side streets, a pro-bike school administration, many adult bike commuters (7.2% per the American Community Survey), and pro-bike City government all help.

YogaKat

This is impressive. I usually drive my daughter to her middle school and everyday I see only one bike on the bike rack.

Yesterday after work, she and I explored the neighborhood and after getting warmed up I guided her to her school. She was rather delighted that we were able to make it there on our bikes. Granted it is only about 3 miles via direct route, but we rode 7 miles due to riding around our own neighborhood first. Plus this is only her fourth day since she learned to ride.

Once we get into the season where it's not dark in the mornings, I would like to start riding to school with her. (I'm night blind whether car, bike or even walking around in the house.)

ciderguy

I have no idea what the percent of bike commuters would have been, but when I was in middle school I felt we had a good number of them. Many of the children in my neighborhood rode bikes to school. Factors that contributed were probably: semi-tropical climate, bike racks at school and other places children would go in town (local library, rec center, etc.), flat elevation, straight roads, and lowish (25mph) speed limits. One of the other things that I feel contributed was the number of people riding. I almost always rode with other children that lived near me. I think most people did. I rode roughly 1.5 miles each way to school at that time and the county library, rec center, and a park was about a 5 mile commute.

berner

I don't remember the name of that school offhand but will make a note of it next time I ride that way in a few days. It is in the town of Barrington, next town north of Bristol.

berner

Dummy me. Rather than riding to the location of the Barrington school, I looked in Google Maps and it is the New Hampden School. The bike racks there look just like the ones in I-Like-To-Bike's post, chock full of bikes.

CrankyOne

Awesome. Just got an email off. Thanks.

CrankyOne

That's terrific. Would you typically see a lot of kids riding on the sidewalks to/from school?

CrankyOne

Which neighborhood and school? I lived in Buckhead and College Park.

CrankyOne

I wonder to what extent this is influenced by the Uni's? I'd guess profs and others in that area are likely fairly pro-bike.

I-Like-To-Bike

My kids were already college age when I moved here.
Typically I never passed by the school at opening or closing time, so I couldn't tell you for sure how they arrived or departed. The street right in front is relatively busy, but the streets leading to it are relatively not, so I assume that they used a combination of sidewalk and street.

randomgear

The Cambridge City government has been very pro-transit, pro-walking, and pro-biking, for far longer than other nearby cities and towns. Since car infrastructure in Cambridge has remained pretty much constant since the 1970's, when I-95 and the I-695 loop were stopped from tearing up Boston and Cambridge, Cambridge was forced to look to other means of getting more people through their city once the area started growing again after 30-40 years of decline. After the Kendall Square neighborhood started attracting the Bio-tech industry in the '90's, Cambridge eventually started a program to reduce car trips in Kendall Square by promoting transit, walking, and biking primarily by mandating that new buildings didn't offer free parking to their employees, promote transit use with pretax transit passes, provide guaranteed ride home services (taxi or private bus), van pooling, and more. Cambridge is also small enough that kids will likely be assigned a school relatively close to their own neighborhood.

Of course, the universities realized long ago that free parking is foolish and that land was worth too much to just be used for parking lots and garages. Their students and staff tend to use transit, bike or walk especially if they live nearby.

In Boston the Jamaica Plain neighborhood is the center of cycling in Boston (Allston residents might disagree) and while I see parents in JP taking their preschool/kindergarten kids to school on bikes. In my neighborhood of Roslindale, I don't see elementary/middle/or high school kids going or coming to school on bikes even though I have two middle schools less than half a mile from my apartment. The busing system in Boston really reduces the chances that kids will go to school in their own neighborhood, especially in poorer neighborhoods of color. By and large, my understanding is that parents with any money send their kids to parochial or private school and some of those are quite far away.

Full disclosure: I don't have kids, I didn't grow up in Boston, and, because of that, I don't understand Boston's school lottery/selection/merit system at all.