Photos of the Week: Amherst Celebrates International Walk, Bike, and Roll to School Day
Students traveling to Fort River Elementary School from Echo Hill. October 9, 2024. Photo: Ezra Markowitz
October is Pedestrian Safety Month, and October 9 was the International Walk, Bike, and and Roll to School Day. At schools around the country and in Massachusetts, students and families celebrated the day by meeting up and commuting to school under their own power. Participating schools in Massachusetts registered through the statewide Safe Routes to School program. It was the second year that Crocker Farm, Fort River, and Wildwood Elementary Schools have been part of iWalk and Pelham Elementary School’s first year.
It was a beautiful, brisk fall morning. Groups organized by parent volunteers met up in different neighborhoods and biked and walked together with students to their schools. Over 10 neighborhoods and over 150 students participated. Some groups had police escorts for safety organized by Amherst Police Sergeant Nicholas Chandler. One of the larger groups met at the South Amherst Common, and then, led by Amherst Police bike patrol officer Casey Nagle, over 20 Crocker Farm students, along with parents, biked along Shays Street to the school entrance and down the driveway to the school playground. Once they arrived, they, along with students biking and walking to school from other Crocker Farm neighborhoods, were greeted by school Principal Derek Shea, Assistant Principal Alicia Lopez, and other school staff and teachers, and offered donuts, apples, and Safe Routes to School (SRTS) stickers.
Other large groups biked along East Pleasant Street to Wild Wood Elementary School; as well as down Pelham Hill Road from Echo Hill, and up North East street from Shutesbury Rd to Fort River Elementary School. Students arriving at Fort River Elementary School were met by P.E. teacher Kaileigh Keizer who had been including walking, biking, and rolling safety into gym class over the past few weeks as well as Fort River staff and members of Amherst Regional Public Schools Superintendent Dr. E. Xiomara Herman’s staff.
The volunteers organizing Amherst’s iWalk events in Amherst and Pelham look forward to growing them in future years, and also to participating in other SRTS activities, including Massachusetts Walk, Bike, and Roll to School Day in May 2025. The Amherst-Pelham schools are also considering offering SRTS safe walking and biking education for students. The Massachusetts Safe Routes to School program provides curriculum resources and support for such training.
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These photos are great, and all depicted seem to be shouting:
Let’s do this more often! 🙂
I have been reading about the practice of “bike buses” in the Netherlands but they are also showing up around the US including one in Boston, and it seems like this is a possible strategy for cyclists to create their own safe space – that is – by traveling en masse. Of course the Netherlands is already a very bike friendly place (27% of the population cycles to work and 50% of trips under 5 km are made by bike) and motorists are not only used to sharing the road with cyclists but seem to have embraced a culture of deference to them. We have a long way to go here – but if we’re going to get folks out of their cars – which we’ll need to do to meet our 2030 and 2050 climate/energy targets, we’re going to have to make it easier for folks to cycle and greatly diminish the risk of getting killed while doing it. Big cities like London and Paris have made great progress toward this goal. Here we need to change the conversation to one of possibility so folks stop saying – it just can’t be done on our crowded roads or it’s just too expensive.
Here’s a video of a bike bus in the Netherlands.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=317001389010974
And here’s an article on how folks started up bike buse in Portland, OR (and how you can start one in your own community).
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-start-a-bike-bus/
And here’s some info on the Boston Bike Bus
https://www.bikebus.boston
Wow. I love this idea. Amherst would be a great place to develop different bike routes to school. I can envision my neighborhood of Orchard Valley having a route to Crocker Farm School via the bike path along Rt. 116.
This added to incentivizing using the school bus.