Intersections: Walking to School and Community Safety

Intersections is a new series of articles exploring the ways that riding a bike can contribute positively to many contemporary issues, whether we know it or not. This is the first in the series.

One of our goals here at the bikePHL blog is to show that using a bicycle can simply be about using a bicycle: it's fun, helps get you in shape, and is a cheap way to get around.

Just because you ride a bike doesn't mean you need to be fighting a one-woman or one-man revolution for a car-free earth, or carry a messenger bag and have lots of tattoos, or wear reflective vests and funny spandex pants (which are, supposedly, actually very comfortable). Bicycles can serve useful purposes for everyone -regardless of categories like these- and we are trying to reach people across all groups.

So for me, I still mostly see my bike as a way to get around. But I have also started to discover that bicycling can be relevant to many contemporary issues, whether we are aware of them or not.
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Last sunday the New York Times published an article, entitled Why Can't She Walk to School?, about parents' fear of letting their children walk or bike to school by themselves. From the article:

...With anxiety over transferring children from the private world of family to the public world of school, the new normal can look increasingly baroque. Now, in some suburbs, parents and children sit in their cars at the end of driveways, waiting for the bus. Some school buses now have been fitted with surveillance cameras, watching for beatings and bullying.

Children are driven to schools two blocks away. At some schools, parents drive up with their children’s names displayed on their dashboards, a school official radios to the building, and each child is escorted out...

In 1969, 41 percent of children either walked or biked to school; by 2001, only 13 percent still did, according to data from the National Household Travel Survey. In many low-income neighborhoods, children have no choice but to walk. During the same period, children either being driven or driving themselves to school rose to 55 percent from 20 percent. Experts say the transition has not only contributed to the rise in pollution, traffic congestion and childhood obesity, but has also hampered children’s ability to navigate the world.

Jan Hoffman, New York Times 9/13/2009.

I am not a parent, so even though I can empathize with parents' fear for their kids I have never experienced it. But it seems like we only make our streets more unfriendly, and less safe, by isolating ourselves in this way. Rather than spending more time by ourselves in cars and homes, I would hope we can make the streets more safe by working together to go outside and fill them with friendly neighbors.

The Walking School Bus and the Bike Train are two strategies which accomplish exactly that. Parent volunteers walk or bike with groups of children, acting as the 'driver' and 'caboose' of the train, picking up more children (and additional adult supervisors) along the route.

These strategies work by getting more people out in the streets, biking and walking. In fact, studies have shown that the streets are safer from motor vehicle dangers, and from crime, by more people using them for biking and walking. Just by the act of riding a bike around, we all make our communities safer, and stronger.