Why isn't walking/biking to school programming an option in Suburban Omaha? | Inadequacies in school transportation planning

While my SmartNews newsfeed mostly seems to be about crime, there is a sub-thread on "good news." 

This ad from 1923 demonstrates that car companies 

have promoted driving kids to school for a long time. 

An article ("Exhausted Boy Ineligible To Take The Bus Walks 4 Miles To School Daily – One Day, A Stranger Makes An Offer," Goalcast), told the story of how a kid refused bus service to get to school had to walk two miles each way and this was especially hard in the winter as his family didn't have a car.  

The good news part of the story is that someone who saw the tv news story about it offered to drive the kid to school.  (The story is actually almost 7 years old.)

My first reaction was why didn't they get the kid a bicycle?  

While it would take him a minimum of 40 minutes to walk two miles, a bike ride would probably be 15 minutes.

According to the website for the Papillion La Vista Community Schools district, they don't provide bus service to students who live within four miles of a school.  At the time of the article, it was two miles.  This policy definitely presumes students will be driven by parents.

Walk to School Map, Bemis Elementary School, Rialto, California

Produced by Danielle Berger, AICP

Do school systems have responsibility to ensure "safe means" as well as "safe routes to school" in areas where bus service isn't provided?  In PLVCSD, the policy on "get to school yourself" seems to be applied regardless of the existence of walking and biking infrastructure or whether or not the family has a car.  

Although looking at Carriage Hill Elementary School on Google--this is where the student featured in the article went to school--the school has bike racks and there seems to be an acceptable sidewalk network serving the school (the sidewalks are pretty narrow and many immediately abut the street).

I have written in the past how few states require school districts to do what I call "balanced transportation planning," that is, to plan for walking, biking and other micromobility (skateboards, scooters, etc.), rather than to exclusively focus on bus-based transportation.  

-- "School bus travails and International Walk and Bike to School Day," 2021

Usually because of parent interest, and the fact that some schools are still embedded in walkable neighborhoods, in addition to busing, sometimes there are Safe Routes to School programs side by side.  

(For example, with Montgomery County Maryland, elementary school "no service" zones are one mile for elementary school, 1.5 miles for middle school, and two miles for high school.  But adverse walking conditions can provide exceptions to the policy.  Except for special education, DC doesn't provide school bus service at all.  But children and youth are eligible for a free transit pass for Metrobus and Metrorail.  The pass used to have a small charge, like $15 per month.  Now it's free.)

But with few exceptions, school districts aren't required to support SRTS programs.  When they are provided, they are more likely to be part of city planning or transportation departments, not the school system.

Washington State.  A few decades ago, Washington State changed their process, which had been focused on financial support for bus transportation.  Recognizing the issue was transportation, not "buses," they modified policy to include financial support for walking and biking.  

The planning guide they publish is particularly good.  Washington State provides resources to schools for "nonbus" transportation for areas within a two mile radius of the school.  They recommend school districts create district-wide traffic safety committees, and require the production of safe routes to school maps for all elementary schools (including private and parochial schools).  Increasingly, school districts in Washington are extending SRTS programming, including mapping, to junior and senior high schools.

-- School Walk and Bike Routes: A Guide for Planning and Improving Walk and Bike to School Options for Students
-- Safe Routes to School program, Washington State
-- City of Tacoma SRTS program, including SRTS Action Plan.  

Note that the Tacoma city transportation website for SRTS is significantly better than the resources provided on the school district website.  

It is typical for SRTS programs to be delivered by a city planning/transportation department rather than the school system, because they have the resources.  At the same time, my recommendation is that school districts be given this responsibility, and hire planners and outreach personnel, although there could be exceptions for smaller districts.

-- Seattle Walk to School maps

Boulder and Palo Alto do "multi-modal" student transportation planning.  Outside of Washington State, I only know of a couple school districts that do this along the lines of how I conceptualize it, Boulder Valley School District in Colorado and Palo Alto in California.  BVSD has multiple walk/bike planners on staff.

Other school systems do some planning for walk and/or bike to school, but it tends to be less systematic.  For example, Minneapolis has a Safe Routes to School policy plan, but not a master plan for each school.  Schools that do SRTS tend to do it in response to particularly motivated parents.

Besides printed brochures, Palo Alto posts large scale SRTS maps in each school building.

Palo Alto is exceptional because they do balanced transportation planning for all grades, while most places only focus on elementary aged students.

Nonbus service zones may equal nonplanning/disavowal of responsibility to ensure a kid can get to school safely and efficiently.  This story makes me realize that there is a subtle gap in school "planning" for transportation that I hadn't considered.

While a school district like Papillion La Vista Community Schools has policies for providing/not providing school bus transportation, they don't have a policy for ensuring kids have a safe and convenient means for getting to school.

By creating zones for no bus service, without a master policy these zones become "non planning zones" where the school system takes zero responsibility for ensuring that children can get to school safely.

Equity.  The Tacoma SRTS Action Plan has a strong equity lens (Equity is one of the "six" E's of their planning framework, which is a recent addition to the "E's" framework for bike and pedestrian planning), which is a great way to frame this discussion, because equity is the issue--are the students "who don't get bus service" provided with the support they need to get to school safely?

-- "Creating Inclusive & Equitable Safe Routes to School Programs," presentation, National Walking Summit

An equity lens means you provide extranormal assistance to the people who need it.

School systems with large non-bus service zones need to provide SRTS programming too.  In short, just because a school system sets up bus zones farther out shouldn't mean that at the same time they absolve themselves from responsibility for planning and implementing programs for how children may get to school--on foot, by bike, or by car--in the non-service zones.

While there should be a master SRTS program for all school districts, at the very least, all schools, including Carriage Hill Elementary School, should have a process for checking in with each student on their ability to get to and from school safely as part of the start of school/enrollment process, and for providing more direct assistance as needed. 

From Safe Routes to School to School Transportation Demand Management.  And just like how Ripon College started a bicycle program for new students as a way to reduce the need for students to bring a car and the increase in demand for parking spaces, which are expensive to build and maintain ("Ripon College gives freshmen free bikes for no-car pledges," Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), school systems should step in and facilitate the provision of bikes to students as necessary, provide high quality bike parking, etc.

Plus, the school system needs to encourage the community to shovel sidewalks in winter so that students can safely walk or bike to school despite weather conditions.

And assist in the organization of car pools. 

In short, instead of focusing on "safe routes to school" and promoting walking and biking, we should be focusing on "transportation demand management" more generally.

SRTS prioritizes walking and biking, but foremost, what is required is a process where the school system leads in building the infrastructure, tangible like sidewalks, bike lanes, secure bike racks, showers for staff, bikes for kids who need bikes, etc. and intangible infrastructure like programming such as Walk and Bike to School Day, groups walking and riding to school, car pool organization assistance, etc.

Engagement.  Interestingly, the Tacoma SRTS program also adds "Engagement" to the traditional 5/6 E's framework for bike and pedestrian planning.  

I don't see how that's different from "Encouragement" but it reminds me to mention a few best practice programs I've come across.  And it makes more clear the need for ongoing and systematic programming.

There's tons out there on SRTS generally.  The entry "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 18 programs," could be revised just for SRTS.

Nationally, the Safe Routes to School Partnership is the primary resource.

Starkville in Motion is an advocacy group in Mississippi that used "walking and biking to school" as a way to engage the community on improving pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure more generally, which is a point made by the Washington School Walk and Bike Guide, that infrastructure improvements for children walking and biking to school also benefit neighborhoods and builds support.

Pedestrian advocacy organizations like Feet First in Seattle have provided a great deal of support to Walk to School efforts.

Omaha has a group called Activate Omaha which has done some SRTS programming, but it is not a district wide program, nor does it provide support to suburban jurisdictions like the cities of Papillion (12 miles from Downtown Omaha) and La Vista (10 miles).

While International Walk and Bike to School Day is October 6th, schools should probably have such an event in September when school opens, as a way to check in with kids and parents on how they get to school.  

It turns out that in the US, the national walk and bike to school advocacy initiative has changed how they organize with separate Walk and Roll to School and Bike and Roll to School Days, the latter including scooters and skateboards.  The Walk Day is the same as International Walk and Bike to School Day, in October.

They have set Bike and Roll to School Day in May, which is National Bike Month, but to me that's the absolute wrong time to promote "rolling" to school, as by then the school year is almost over.

Youth bike programs.  Youth bike programs generally use biking as a way to teach life skills.  Some programs that come to mind are Gearin' Up Bicycles in DC, Phoenix Bikes in Arlington County, Virginia, Recycle-A-Bicycle in New York City (in the past, they've sponsored a national Youth Bike Summit), and Neighborhood Bike Works in Philadelphia ("Well Being: Ride of Dreams takes them far" Philadelphia Inquirer).  NBW is now an independent organization but originally it was a program of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

A program I find particularly impressive is the Ghisallo Bicycle Initiative in Austin, Texas.  It's definitely a model of national best practice.  One of their programs sets up "Bike Club" after-school programs at specific schools, but they have many more equally awesome programs, for all age levels.

Bike donations programs.  Ghisallo also provides free bikes to children as do others, including Sun Youth Organization in Montreal, Wish for Wheels in Colorado, Dallas Earn-a-bike, Project Bicycle Love in Ventura County, California, and the Community Bicycle Center in Biddeford, Maine.  While the Community Cycles Earn-a-Bike program in Boulder offers bikes to youths 16 and older, it is equally focused on adults.

Training.  Many states have bicycle and walking education programs for children, often involving either the traffic safety unit of the police department or local bicycling promotion organizations.

States should require all school districts do TDM /balanced transportation planning, not just focus on busing.  I wrote this based on my experience in Baltimore County, Maryland:

It happens that Baltimore County has a national best practice example of a walk to school program at Stoneleigh Elementary School, and I spent a few hours there on International Walk to School Day in 2009 (and had further interactions with the involved parents who created the program and the principal). 

I realized after that experience, and after learning that the State of Maryland Dept. of Transportation was doing a review of walk to school initiatives at the school district level, that the most fundamental issue was changing the requirements at the state level by requiring school districts to do balanced transportation planning, incorporating walking and biking into the planning regimen. 

Obviously, by doing that, where practical and appropriate, more children would be walking and biking to school. Yet that idea wasn't even in the scope of work of the Maryland study (and final report)!!!!!!!!! (I pointed that out in Oct. or November 2009, but the study scope was never changed.) 

Given that as much as 25% of local traffic in neighborhoods during school opening and closing hours is due to taking kinds to and from school by car, this is an important issue.

Nebraska.  Apparently the state has an SRTS program, and some resources like this Community Partnership Guide, but for the life of me, I can't find a dedicated SRTS webpage on the State DOT website.  State-level requirements for SRTS/school transportation demand management aren't in place.