Hundreds of Bryant Elementary students filled the streets Wednesday for what had to be the biggest bike to school ride in Seattle history.
Seattle School District Superintendent José Banda rode with students and parents from Top Pot Doughnuts to Bryant. He told the crowd gathered for a rally at the end that the district aims to have at least one biking or walking school bus organized at every elementary and K-8 in the district by the 2013-14 school year.
“This is the first district in the country, that we’re aware of, that this is being done,” Banda told the crowd.
About half of the Bryant students walked, biked or unicycled to school Wednesday. Banda told the crowd that his goal is to get the entire district back to a 50 percent walking/biking rate last achieved half a century ago.
We also had the chance to speak with Anne King, one of the original organizers of Bike to Bryant’s now infamous doughnut rides. King (also one of the writers behind the awesome Seattle family biking blog CarFreeDays.com) has watched the event go from 10 or 20 kids to hundreds.
Big thanks to Robyn Ellis for her camera and editing work on the video.
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22 responses to “This is what Seattle’s bike to school revolution looks like (VIDEO)”
[…] here is the video of the event that the Seattle Bike Blog put together. Includes an interview with Car Free Days’ Anne […]
This makes me very proud to have just donated to Sally Bagshaw’s 2013 re-election campaign.
I’m seeing lots of kids riding to school in the area around West Woodland elementary. Much more than this time last year. Good on them!
What’s wrong with the Seattle Times for ignoring this great feel-good day of city-wide events? I suppose they had undercover photographers waiting for something nasty to happen and make it “newsworthy.”
I love this, although why does it make me a bit sad that it takes a police escort to make it safe for a bunch of kids to bike to school?
They usually take neighborhood streets to get there, but since this was a particularly large and organized event, police shut down the major streets for it. Which, by the way, was a lot of fun.
Blessings on you, Eli!
Tom has it right. It’s sort of like with running: lots of folks run around their neighborhood for exercise, but they also will run a 10K or a marathon with a large group with the streets closed for that purpose. When Bryant has 100+ kids on a large group ride, it’s been fun to shut down a street, especially an arterial that’s challenging to ride on otherwise, and make it a rolling bike party. Ever ride down the “wrong” lanes of an arterial with no cars around? It’s a blast!
And lots of kids rode to Bryant again today, on whatever local street leads from their house to the school, with just their parents or friends for support!
It’s really inspiring to see folks taking time to promote active transportation for kids. Cheers to everyone involved!
[…] in many forms. It also includes biking to school, and just in case you haven’t seen this Bike to School Revolution video check it out. No matter how many miles you ride, where you ride or even why you ride, we have […]
OK that makes sense – nevermind! Great event!
We’ve had overflowing bike racks at Stevens the past couple weeks — it’s been awesome. And while we haven’t done any sort of organized ride like that, it seems that almost every day, after my kids and I head out on our bikes, we pick up other folks on their bikes here and there along the way, so by the time we get to school we’ve merged into a spontaneous bike train with as many as 10 kids along with their parents. Good fun.
I’m not familiar with how far along organized biking and walking school buses are at Stevens, but it sure sounds like the school is ready for a more organized effort! With something more planned out, more parents might want to send their young one off into a trustworthy bike train.
Really nice job. Short, sweet and powerful with flashbacks!
Frankly I wish I could make more of my videos under 2 minutes. I think these days the public wants even LESS than 3 or 4 minute films.
To add, of course we published this on Thursday which makes your video and some of the communities trying to turn this thing around even more important.
http://www.streetfilms.org/streetfacts-4-children-have-lost-the-freedom-to-roam/
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[…] year’s ride with Superintendent Banda, may have had their largest ride ever. And if you watch the video we made last year, that’s a whole lot of kid-powered […]
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