is working.
(Photo © J. Maus)
Here’s some good news to start off the weekend…
The Portland Bureau of Transportation announced today that more than 40 percent of students in their Safe Routes to School program walk or bike to school — which is more than twice the national average.
According to the 2009 National Household Travel Survey, the national average for kids walking and biking to school is 11 percent. PBOT also touts that the 40 percent figure is up from 31 percent since the program began counting trips back in 2006.
The City’s Safe Routes to Schools program and curriculum currently reaches over 80 schools throughout the city. That program teaches kids basic biking and walking safety education and includes guided bike rides, access to a fleet of bikes and helmets and participation in encouragement programs.
Portland’s Safe Routes program also includes engineering projects like bike parking, crosswalk improvements, and more. Bolstering their efforts to make school trips safer is PBOT’s Neighborhood Greenways program, which has completed more than 30 miles of family-friendly bikeways in the past two years alone.
By January 2012, 50 percent of Portland households will be within a half mile of a neighborhood greenway.
A big part of keeping the roads near schools safe is making sure traffic laws are enforced. To that end, PBOT is working with the Police Bureau to put a special emphasis on enforcement at the beginning of the school year (between September 6th through the 16th).
Learn more about PBOT Safe Routes program at SafeRoutesPortland.org. To help our local Safe Routes programs thrive, come to Sugar Wheel Works’ ‘Live the Revolution’ benefit event this Friday (9/16).
Thanks for reading.
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We should celebrate the bike trains at inner SE and NE schools. Depending on the weather I’d guess that 50% of the kids don’t arrive on fossil transport.
But then the party is over. In districts like Reynolds, Parkrose and David Douglas about 80% of the kids arrive by fossil transport. The underlying cause is that our City and the PDC have spent public funds on rich people. Poor people have little access to a PDX bike train. They live in the burbs, where we have basic apartheid.
There is great work to be done on safe routes. In Gresham and the burbs!
“Poor people have little access to a PDX bike train. ”
I’m sorry but I’m going to have to disagree with that one. My understanding is that a bike train is a community effort with no input or infrastructure supplied by the City. How can anyone not (in principle) have access to such a thing? Isn’t it a matter of organizing one? Kiel?
Wow. Way to go. I passed, I think it is Beach Elementary the other day, and noticed the bike racks bursting and bikes locked to every available post. Good news. I’m sure it helped that we turned Concordia in to a bikeway. Great to hear.
“more than 40 percent of students in their Safe Routes to School program walk or bike to school”
Does that mean 40+% of students in the schools where this program exists? I’m thinking it is a more limited figure than that. One limitation with which I’m familiar is that the *target* number of bike racks as a percentage of the student body in a given PP school is something like 10%. I could be wrong on the number but it is something pretty low. I’m going to work on figuring out what it will take to increase the number of racks installed around elementary schools. Walking’s great and to be applauded. But biking for those a little or a lot further out is something we should be providing at least a rack for, no?
The following was a comment left on the Oregonian’s Facebook page regarding people who ride bicycles:
“….go ride you r bike on a quiet country straight stretch…or better yet a bike park!!!!! sinc eyou are not serioulsy traveling,,, you are just pleasure riding….most of us in cars really have to get somewhere….like work!!!! arrogant bikers!!!!”
I would be very interested to know what “bike park” this person was referring to.
This is the guy who stenciled ‘Vehicle’s Only !’ And he probably means the Eichler Park. Maybe he’s even a bikeportland reader, and the extra exclamation points reflect his rage over being called out on his grammar?
I love how many kids bike and walk to school here. Having grown up in a Texas suburb, even those of us who lived within a mile or two of school never bothered to walk or bike unless we were stranded.
My daughter and I have ridden to school on a Trail A Bike most days since kindergarten. We ride a fair amount for non school things, and for fun. She’s now in 6th grade, and began riding her own bike only last year because she doesn’t like what some drivers do (we pass near another school on the way, and the driving is particularly atrocious there). The Safe Routes to School program at the end of last year definitely improved her skills and confidence. And among her classmates, I would say it has been similarly effective. A few more ride than they did before, but from what I hear at the bike rack, they are better riders now.
A good program, well worth keeping.
–Pat Franz
Driving at 90 mph is reckless driving. 90 mph works out to about 135 feet per second–so given given the officer near inhuman reaction time, anything entering the road way within a football field would be too close for him to respond correctly. Unexpected road hazards from animal crossing, children darting in, road debris etc happen every day.
I am sorry to hear the loss of anyone’s life, but at least the motor cycle operator didn’t take out a mini-van full of kids (I am also willing to bet a voodoo doughnut his department has strong guidelines against excessive speeding when on duty).
Yesterday I saw about thirty cars parked in the bike lane in front of an elementary school. If we want safe routes to school – ban driving to school.