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Milton: School bans parents from driving kids to school

kettal

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A One of a Kind Walking, Biking School Opens in Canada

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WRITTEN BY RYAN GRAY
TUESDAY, 12 JANUARY 2010 16:05


With the dawn of the new year, a newly opened elementary school in Ontario is heralded as the nation's first school that requires nearly all of its students to get to and from school using their own two feet.

In an effort to battle rising child obesity rates, traffic congestion, environmental concerns and injuries from motor vehicle crashes, P.L. Robertson elementary school in Milton, Ontario, opened its doors last week as the first of its kind that forbids parents from driving their kids to school. According to Jennifer Jenkins, a registered nurse and the project manager for Halton Public School Board's Active and Safe Routes to School Program, about 98 percent of the school's 700 students bike, walk, skateboard or ride scooters to and from school. The $125,000 pilot program is funded for one year with school board funds generated from local taxpayer money.

Jenkins was loaned to the school board by the Halton public health department to implement the innovative program that has turned up eyebrows from British Columbia to Manitoba to other Ontario school boards to districts in the United States. In fact, in August she presented a case study at the second National Safe Routes to School conference held in Portland, Ore.

The program comes on the heels of a pilot run last year at eight other schools to encourage more physical activity for the students and to alleviate hundreds of parents converging on schools in their personal vehicles. Jenkins said a check at another school last year turned up about 150 parents dropping off their children at the same time, which resulted in snarled traffic. The school's principal said the normal number of cars at school in the mornng and afternoon is actually at least twice that number, alleviated that one day only by school construction and rain.

Jenkins said the pilot saw 100 percent student compliance during good weather at many of the participating schools. And even during the snowy or rainy winter, the program saw up to 90 percent of the students continue their pedestrian ways.

"Even kids who were bused decided to join in," she added. "When there are more kids [walking], more kids are apt to do it because they want to be with their friends."

P.L. Robertson, located about 20 miles southwest of Toronto, requires students who live 1.6 km from campus, or about 1 mile, to get to school on their own, often via the school's walking school bus or bike train. That equates to nearly all students except for a handful who are eligible for the yellow school bus because they live farther than 1.6 km or who attend a French immersion dual track school that is located outside of the school district's boundaries.

The program is run in collaboration with a local school transportation consortium that also administers school busing in the province and with local traffic engineers and law enforcement. Karen LaCroix, the general manager of Halton Student Transportation provided by contractor First Student, said approximately 16,000 students who attend the area's two English and French speaking public school boards and two Catholic English and French speaking school boards ride the school bus each day. The active safe routes and transportation programs also work together to develop the actual active safe routes taken to and from school by both walkers and bikers.

Jenkins added there are plans to expand it to 18 to 20 additional schools within the next year, but first she is concentrating on making the program a success at P.L. Robertson.

"If you start a certain lifestyle behavior earlier, the momentum will naturally bring [the safe routes program] to the high school level eventually," she said.

If the project at P.L. Robertson is a success, she added that the school board will need to decide how to evolve student active transportation programs. That could include sitting down with provincial government officials. Already, the local Catholic school board has signed on to participate.

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http://www.stnonline.com/resources/...-a-kind-walking-biking-school-opens-in-canada
 
This is a great solution for the location (840 Scott Blvd, east of Tremaine/Derry). It is a mid-density community in a growing town. Developed cities are much more restricted (cost-wise) in building new schools and as such must shoe more kids into the existing infrastructure. In 20 years when this is a mature subdivision, I expect much higher bussing rates as more families with adult children stay near the school, forcing young families to live farther and bus more often. I hope the program expands across Milton and can show the numbers hold up over the long-term.
 
The thing is that it's not enforceable. Even if they passed a Town By-law saying cars couldn't stop within 50m of a school, I'm sure parents will still drop kids off 51m from the school if they were running late. Similiarly, 10% are driven in foul weather. Finally, how many kids when to the "other school" that they collected driving stats from? 150-300 kids driven out of how many?

Walking school-buses are a good idea because they provide for adult supervision on the walk, which is a key reason for most parents to drive kids to school, besides the reason they are too lazy/busy to walk there.
 
If they've got 98% participation, does it matter that it can't be enforced? Think back to when you were in elementary school. Would you want to be the only kid in your class who got regularily driven to school? It was like painting a bulls-eye on your head.
 
It got 98% participation in a new school in a new subdivision. Fourteen kids live over 1.6km from the school. Look at the school district boundaries, PL Robertson's district is 2.9km wide and 3.1km long and only the quarter closest to the school has been constructed. Once the district is built-up, I feel there 98% will drop to 24% as 3/4 of the kids would be bussed without more 3 more schools.
 
I'd get more excited if they banned staff parking. Now THAT would be radical. None of the articles I've read mentioned staff.
 
I'd get more excited if they banned staff parking. Now THAT would be radical. None of the articles I've read mentioned staff.

I've heard of school boards that have banned new two-storey schools because the teachers refuse to walk up stairs. Asking teachers to walk to work would be comedy...
 
I see roads that are by schools with NO STOPPING signs out front. No parking means that one can stop to do deliveries or drop-off/pick-up passengers. No standing means that one can drop-off/pick-up passengers, but no deliveries. No stopping means no stopping for anything, unless directed to by the police. Almost every school day, there are cars in the NO STOPPING zone waiting for students and ignoring the signs.

Of course the NO STOPPING does not apply to them, since there are no cops around to give them tickets. I would guess that if the cops do hang around, there will be arguments galore about who the signs apply to.
 
Most kids also live within 1.6km. That's very, very walkable. 1.6km is like a <3 min bike ride. It's just plain laziness to get a ride to school when the weather is sunny.
 
This is a fantastic idea. Granted, this is not a new idea at all (neither is New Urbanism in general). My parents used to walk to and from school every day, it was only with my generation that society got all hyper-sensitive that your kid may be snatched up on their way to school, so we better put them on a bus just to be safe. I really do like the idea of this program though, especially because there are really no formal sanctions for non-compliance, it's just encouraged that you do it. The only real sanction (which was mentioned previously) is peer pressure and bullying if you don't do it.

I remember when I was in grade 1, my teacher sent home a note to the parents saying that she recommended that all lunches be put into tupperware containers instead of using tin foil or pastic wrap. Nearly all of the class gladly did it. There wasn't any fear of sanctions if they didn't, parents and students just realized it was the right thing to do. I think that's also the case here.
 
I don't see the safety factor in child supervision is any more hyper-senstive than bicycle helmet laws or seatbeat laws. My parents used to smoke like chimneys, it was only with my generation that society got all hyper-sensitive about cancer. Just because the level of concern has changed, does not equate it to hyper-sensitivity. Approximately 1000 children a year are abducted in Canada out of approximately 3,000,000.
 

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