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.
