School pick-ups and drop-offs are often the worst part of the school day. The reason they’re so stressful and chaotic is because people don’t use their cars with consideration for anyone but themselves. And since cars take up so much space, it doesn’t take much for every other road user to get squeezed out.
But at Sunnyside Environmental School in southeast Portland, families who bike together to school have a place of their own.
“Bike Drop-Off Zone” reads the signs in front of the school’s main entrance on SE Salmon Street. The project is the result of listening to parents who needed a place to temporarily park their bikes — a growing number of which are large and heavy electric cargo bikes. “We have a lot of families who bike to school every day,” the school’s bike bus and safe routes program coordinator Alida Cantor told BikePortland via email.
While the bike bus isn’t a huge thing at Sunnyside, Cantor said a lot of families bike to drop-off and pick-up and fighting for curb space with drivers was a bummer. “I talked to the school principal and she was supportive of making a bike drop-off zone,” Cantor shared.
She used a $500 micro-grant from Metro to print up the signs and do the legwork to get the project off the ground (the funding also buys helmets and bike lights for any student who needs them). With the principal’s permission, Cantor has effectively taken over one parking space and turned it into a bikes only-zone for two hours a day (one hour for drop-off and one hour for pick-up).
“So far it is working!” Cantor says. “Cars are leaving that space free, and families who bike have a spot to park. I’m estimating about 5-10 bikes, many of which are cargo bikes carrying kids, can fit in that one parking spot.”
Cantor’s parking re-allocation isn’t official and she doesn’t have Portland Bureau of Transportation permission to keep cars out. PBOT doesn’t currently have a program like this, so for now it’s just a grassroots effort to use the space differently. “I’m just hoping it works out and that drivers respect the signage,” Cantor says.
Thanks for reading.
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Spoiler: They won’t
That block face is 1 hour only parking, so the car parking should only be used by other people dropping off their kids. That gives it much better chance of working long term than if it was unregulated parking.
They definitely will need to paint the asphalt here at some point.
Green stripes and/or a bike box?!
I just love that this is happening! It’s super to read such a positive and creative idea to make biking in Portland more attractive.
Nice work Alida !! You’re a leader !!!
I think this is really cool and shows off how space-efficient bikes (even big cargo bikes) are compared to cars. I’d expect that in this area, drivers will probably respect it and not park there. I think anyone who lives in inner SE is aware it’s a place people bike a lot. I’d love to see this type of thing roll out at other schools!
Wonderful. More of this.
Does anybody have a sense for what the modal share splits are for kids arriving at school. Where I grew up, nearly everyone took the bus or rode/walked (until high school and everyone crammed into the car of the first person of their friend group to get their license).
I grew in a pretty car-centric environment, but the only time I got driven to school was if I missed the bus (and therefore was in trouble).
Point is, the modern scrum to drop off/pick up a kid at school in a car just seems absolutely bonkers to me.
At the school I work at, it’s about 50% bus, 25% walk/bike, and 25% car. We are in a relatively car-centric area. Guess which mode causes the most headache, conflict, and takes up the most space for staff trying to manage 🙂
There’s a lot of factors that have created these monstrous school drop off lines; lack of sidewalk coverage, escalating driver behavior, and “stranger danger” paranoia culture to name a few. I think the biggest institutional factor is cuts to school bus service. Fewer drivers are being tasked with driving more kids for the same crappy pay and hours. Routes are winding, inconsistent, and take a long time to get to/from school. I grew up in a rural area, where kids would spend 30-45 minutes on the bus, but that was because they lived miles and miles out of town. Now kids spend 45 minutes on the bus for what would be a 15 minute walk, but their families don’t want them walking because it’s not safe to cross the stroad. People with the means and flexibility often choose to drive their kids to school. The reason we have such a high bus mode share, I suspect, is because we are in a low-income area were people don’t have the flexibility in their schedules to drive their kids to school. Or they can’t afford cars.
School bus drivers work in the early morning and late afternoon, with an awkward gap in the middle. They aren’t quite full time, but don’t really have the time to fit a 2nd job in to make up the difference. Every school bus driver I know has a ‘side gig’ to make it work financially. They might pick up extra hours driving for field trips or sports, but generally that work isn’t consistent. For folks with their CDLs that are willing to drive large vehicles, it’s just a lot more appealing to go drive a delivery truck where at least you’ll get consistent hours.
Much appreciate the response. In case it wasn’t clear from my question, I don’t have any children, so this is all pretty removed from my daily life.
PBOT is already creating permanent drop-off and pick-up spots using on-street parking spaces. The FAST STOP 5-Minute Parking Zones framework could be redesigned to focus on bike drop-offs and pick-ups only for schools (no car parking allowed). The existing 5-Minute Parking Zones criteria requires two businesses adjacent to the same block (hey, that includes schools like Sunnyside Environmental School and nonprofit churches like Sunnyside United Methodist Church which are on the same block face in Sunnyside!) to sign off on it. The 5-Minute Parking Zones are available citywide. Let’s make a bike only school drop-off, pick-up parking zone too.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/parking/faststop
I like where you’re going with this, but those spots across the cities are for drivers to leave their property for 5ish minutes. PBOT has never made a bike only dropoff, unless you count the staple racks, which is a different use case.
Great work Alida!
I bike commute past the school every morning. It’s great to see families walking/biking/skateboarding to school; you can watch them interacting and having fun.
But then the adults engaging in motor vehicle drop-offs often are doing incredibly dangerous things. Pulling in/out without signaling, having kids get out of the vehicle into oncoming traffic, and of course just stopping in the middle of the street rather than finding a safe place to pull over. I routinely shout, “Your illegal driving endangers lives” at drivers. It is accurate, although I fear that might be traumatizing to kids, but I also know it is less traumatizing than getting hit or seeing someone else get hit as a result of adults who didn’t leave the home on time endangering everyone else.
I wish the principal and other staff would work on messaging consistently to parents that endangering lives during school drop-off is not acceptable behavior.
This should be very helpful. A few traffic cones in the street will really help understanding and compliance by auto users. I live in Sunnyside and can donate a couple of cones.
I’ve been thinking about traffic control here – basically how to increase flow.
Idling is a real problem too – why are people so reticent to turn off their engines? Wear and tear on a starter is a non-factor; notice that some new vehicles shut off their engine and restart EVERY time they stop.