A School Where You Have to Use Your Own Two Feet

Isn’t this a
pleasant way to travel? (Photo: D Sharon
Pruitt via Flickr)

In my Brooklyn neighborhood, one of the most walkable and
transit-rich in the country, the streets near schools fill up every
morning and afternoon with parents dropping off and picking up their
kids in cars. They double-park, they idle, they block bike lanes.
Somehow this scenario — which was unthinkable when I was a New York kid
in the 1970s — has become the norm.

The same is true in most communities around North America. Which is
why the policy of a new elementary school in Milton, Ontario, is worth
noting. Located in a fast-growing part of the Greater Toronto Area, it
has been designated a “walking-only school” (bikes and scooters are
fine, too).

From Streetsblog Network member Spacing
Toronto:

In light of increasing concern over traffic problems around school
and the rising incidence of childhood obesity, schools are beginning to
pay closer attention to the transportation habits of their students. One
Milton school in particular is drawing attention from around North
America with a full-out ban on parents driving their kids to school.

The Halton School Board’s Active and Safe
Routes to School and local public health officials launched the
program this year at Milton’s P.L. Robertson Elementary School. Costing
the school board $125,000, the ban on driving is a one-year pilot with
hopes of expanding to other schools in the community in the coming
years.

So far the project has been a success, with project manager Jenifer
Jenkins saying that the school quickly reached a 100% compliance rate.
Surprisingly the rate stayed high even as the weather worsened,
indicating a broader change in behavior. Jenkins also says that some
students who qualify for buses have opted to walk instead so as to join
their friends. This implies that walking will become more attractive to
students as more of their peers do start doing it.

Read more about the program here.
It’s a far cry from the policy
of a school in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., that made the news last year — a
policy that banned students commuting by bicycle, even in the company
of their parents.

A little-mentioned side benefit of encouraging kids to travel to
school using their own power is that it will get parents out of cars as
well. And maybe the grown-ups will be more likely to see that it’s
possible to make other local trips under their own steam.

More from around the network: The
City Fix reports on a Nigerian community that has successfully
banned dangerous and dirty commercial motorbikes. Bicycle Commuters of
Anchorage celebrates the passage of a bicycle plan for that city.
And Tom Vanderbilt at How We
Drive points out some interesting numbers on the amount of land
taken up by parking lots in the United States.