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Entries tagged: Children

Like many advocacy organizations, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is working to create a city where all residents — from ages 8 to 80 — feel safe and comfortable walking and biking for transportation and recreation. But, to make that inspiring concept a reality, SFBC knows they need more than crosswalks and bikeways. They need to expand their resources and redefine who they serve, too.

If you survey the streets, it’s not just individual riders pedaling to work. It’s moms with newborns and dads with toddlers two-wheeling to daycare and swinging by the grocery store. So SFBC is making sure the needs of the modern family fit seamlessly with the bicycling lifestyle.

With a large and growing membership, the SFBC recognized that: “Family biking is often a very different experience than biking on your own. Whether you biked a lot before becoming a parent, are just getting back to biking after years away, or want to teach your kids to bike, you very likely have questions about how to approach each stage of family biking.”

So Kit Hodge, along with some SFBC board members and advocates, have endeavored to answer those very questions. The first resource is a new online Family Biking Guide that tackles important topics like:

• Biking pregnant, including advice for each trimester and general tips like what type of bike to ride to accommodate your baby bump
• Biking with your baby or young toddler, including tips for before and after your baby can sit up and suggestions for overcoming legitimate fears for your baby’s safety
• Teaching your child to bike, including an outline of skills to teach to get your kid street ready

But the guide is just the first step. This week, SFBC is kicking off of a three-part family biking class. The free, 90-minute sessions include Biking Pregnant, Biking With Your Baby & Toddler, and Biking Your Child to School.

Kit says she hopes the guide and classes will be an inspiration to current cyclists who don’t want to give up riding because they have a family.

“I suspect that we’ve been losing some people to that transition, at least for a few years,” she says. “The initiative is also part of our overall messaging about 8-to-80 biking in San Francisco, and goes hand in hand with our communications focus on safe and respectful riding this Winter and Spring as we head to crucial votes on new, next generation bikeway projects and implementation.”

Interested in learning more about innovative bicycle safety and education courses like this? Click here for the Family Biking Guide — and stay tuned to our upcoming list of 2012 Mutual Aid Calls!

On October 1, Chicago advocates celebrated the first open streets initiative since 2009 — and they went big.

The initiative was held on the city’s iconic State Street in the heart of downtown, and was titled Open Streets on State Street. Unlike the initiative in New York City, which was organized by the NYC DOT, Chicago’s initiative was put on by local Alliance member organization Active Transportation Alliance, in cooperation with the Chicago Loop Alliance.

While Active Trans has organized open streets in the past, this was the advocates first time preparing an initiative downtown. In anticipation of the time commitment, the organization hired several part-time staff members to help coordinate volunteers, programming and logistics for the big event. Active Trans also partnered with local media to spread the word.

The initiative itself was a huge success, with thousands of pedestrians and cyclists enjoying a brisk fall day. Children were everywhere along the route, enjoying relay races, the imagination playground and plenty of active games. Even Chicago Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein got in on the fun by taking a turn in the dunk tank.

Active Trans Open Streets Manager Julia Kim summed up Open Streets on State Street by saying, “We’re encouraging people to ride bikes, take a stroll, and embrace the dramatic beauty of Chicago. Open Streets brings communities together to have fun and lead active lifestyles.”

With the success of this year’s initiatives, Active Trans is already looking forward to holding more frequent and larger open streets next year. The goal is to create routes that link downtown and neighborhood initiatives, allowing Chicago’s open streets to benefit both its diverse communities and major business district.

Learn more about the evolution of Chicago’s initiative and get tips from Active Trans’ Adolfo Hernandez by listening to or downloading the tip sheet from our recent Mutual Aid Call on Open Streets. If you have successes to share about initiatives in your community, e-mail me at Mike@PeoplePoweredMovement.org.

There’s no doubt that Americans are hungry for fresh, local food. Over the past decade, the number of farmers markets has doubled, with a 16 percent increase in 2010 alone. Even in the heart of New York City, urban residents savor the opportunity to wander in the open air, connecting with their regional growers.

This summer, bike-ped advocates at Transportation Alternatives came up with an innovative way to partner with their local farmers markets — and prove that kids have an appetite for open streets.

In July and August, TA worked with the Strategic Alliance for Health, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Harvest Home Farmer’s Market, a non-profit organization that runs 20 farmer’s markets in low-income neighborhoods, to produce a series of events called Play Street.

In the unused areas of farmers markets in East Harlem and the South Bronx, the streets remained off-limits to traffic and open to area children. Kids from the surrounding neighborhood turned out in droves to jump rope, play sports and even take yoga classes. Hosted in areas where more than one-third of residents live below the poverty line and more than 40 percent of primary school children are overweight or obese, Play Street drew more than 1,200 children and teenagers.

“Streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of our public space in New York City and we need to make sure these streets benefit everyone, not just private vehicles,” Julia De Martini Day, director of transportation and health at TA, said in a press release last week. “Play streets are a great way to demonstrate the potential for NYC streets to be healthy places where kids and adults can socialize, play and exercise.”

The Play Street events went so well that advocates are hoping to expand the idea to eight other farmers markets next year. And to make their case, TA hooked up with the New York Academy of Medicine to conduct a survey of the events’ participants. The results, released last week, included some moving numbers.

- If not at the Play Street, 64 percent of children would have been doing something sedentary, like watching TV or playing video games

- Because of the Play Street, 84 percent of families felt their neighborhood was safer

- More than 90 percent said they would recommend Play Street to their friends and neighbors

“In New York City, our streets are our backyards,” Paul Steely White, executive director of TA, said. “By creating a safe space from cars at our doorsteps, play streets make the healthy choice the easy choice by allowing people to incorporate play and exercise into their daily routines.”

Read more about the project and download the Play Street report from our Resources Library.

Teaching the next generation about the benefits of bicycling and walking just got easier for Oregon educators.

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) and Oregon Safe Routes to School have partnered to develop and produce the Neighborhood Navigators curriculum, and they are now distributing it online, free of charge to educators.

Focusing on efficient and healthy transportation choices, pedestrian safety, and community and neighborhood design, the curriculum includes age-appropriate lessons and skill practice activities for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

For more information and to access the Neighborhood Navigators curriculum, visit BTA at http://www.bta4bikes.org.

Image from Neighborhood Navigators Grades 4-5 Curriculum
Article courtesy of Jacob Knight

According to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine, students in at least 27 Maine schools, from Aroostook to York counties, will commute by foot or bicycle this week.  While most schools have activities planned for October 7 (International Walk & Bike to School Day), some have organized walking and/or bicycling events on other days.

Parents, teachers and volunteers at each school have organized the events, including “walking school buses” (children walking under adult supervision) and “bike trains” (groups bicycling under adult supervision). Maine’s Safe Routes to School program, managed by the Bicycle Coalition of Maine under contract to MaineDOT, provides support and encourages more schools to participate.

“The Safe Routes to School program seeks to change the habits of a generation,” said Allison Vogt, the coalition’s executive director. “The events taking place this week will help make that happen by showing students, parents and teachers the value of commuting by bicycle and by foot.”

Since the Maine Safe Routes to School program began in 2001, more than 150 schools have become involved.  The program has provided funding to more than 30 communities for infrastructure improvements to make walking and biking safer.

The program has two regional coordinators: Sarah Cushman (sarah@sarahcushman.com ) in southern Maine and Darcy Whittemore (saferoutes@BikeMaine.org ) in the central part of the state. For more information or details about the October 7 events, please e-mail them or call 207-623-4511.