By Tim Schaefer

In a recent survey of 1,900 students at six high schools in Calgary, Youth En Route discovered only 1% of students chose to regularly wheel (bike, scooter, etc.) to school. Meanwhile 45% took transit, 44% were driven, and 10% walked. What’s profound about these numbers is the number who are driven. While some high school students may have a vehicle to drive themselves, most are driven to school by someone else. This means that there are people making two round trips or four one way trips a day to drive their kids to school.

Youth En Route presented these numbers to the Calgary City Council Infrastructure committee in July 2022 where they also shared their goal to increase the number of kids biking to school from 1% to 20%. Is this a lofty goal? Yes, but definitely achievable. For example a 2022 IPSOS survey found that Sweden, with a similar climate to Canada, had 20% of people riding bikes as their primary means of transport to destinations like school. Are Swedes able to do this because they are stronger or tougher than Canadians? No way!

The impact of achieving 20% bike ridership amongst grade school students would be huge for Calgary traffic! In September 2022 there will be approximately 200,000 kids attending Calgary grade schools and if 20% were biking this means 40,000 kids would be riding a bike to school. This translates into 160,000 one way driving trips removed from Calgary streets each day.

What does 160,000 trips look like? To put it in terms of existing roads, there are sections of Deerfoot Trail that had daily pre-pandemic volumes in this range. So by getting 20% of kids biking to school, we would remove a Deerfoot Trail’s worth of traffic every day from Calgary streets. That’s impressive!

What’s needed to make this happen? There are two main things:

Create safe routes for biking to schools
Create secure places to park bikes

Safe paths to school is the biggest reason kids don’t bike to school today. Fortunately Calgary has amazing recreational pathways that provide a great foundation and several are very close to schools. Where there are gaps, we need to finish those connections of safe infrastructure by creating protected lanes for kids. That might mean creating protected bike lanes on streets leading to schools, especially in older neighbourhoods like Hillhurst Sunnyside where recreational pathways weren’t built when they were created. Protected bike lanes on 2 Ave NW and 5 Ave NW would allow so many more kids to bike to school

Building safe pathways for kids to travel by bike to school will come at a financial cost but is remarkably cheaper than supporting the same volume of kids transported by cars. Youth En Route estimates that for the same price as one highway interchange, Calgary could create safe routes to every school in the entire city. Compare that to the Deerfoot Trail where today we have built 20 interchanges to support the same amount of daily traffic. That’s a massive cost difference!

As for item 2, many schools have bike racks but most are the old 1950’s style wheel bender type that are difficult to securely lock a bike. Kids won’t bike to school if their bike is likely to be stolen. This is where Youth En Route is working with schools and their Parent Societies to transform their old racks to be more secure. They also work with the school to have racks positioned in appropriate places to provide a more secure solution.

There are so many benefits to having kids bike to school instead of being driven. From mental and physical health to building independence, the freedom active mobility provides is liberating for kids. It’s also liberating for taxi moms and dads who spend too much time driving already!

If you’d like to see fewer cars on the streets in Calgary by having more kids choosing active modes of transport, then get in contact with your city Councillor and Ward office and let them know you want investment in safe routes to schools. There will be a vote on funding safe routes to school this fall and Calgary City Council will be deciding whether to continue at a slow pace or whether they should accelerate that plan. Let’s help more kids bike to school sooner so collectively we can realize all the benefits it will offer.

Want to learn more about Youth En Route? Check out their website: youthenroute.ca