Bike Bus expands to two schools, explores other municipalities

An organization that facilitates group rides for cycling students has expanded to two more schools in Edmonton and may be on its way to other Alberta cities, too.

"All the big things are really happening behind the scenes that are going to help this really explode in the coming years," said Kellen Westman, president of Bike Bus Alberta.

Westman started a bike bus at Rutherford School in Bonnie Doon at the beginning of this school year. It kept going through winter, and in the spring, Westman helped community members launch routes to Westglen Elementary in Westmount and Lendrum Elementary in south Edmonton.

Each bike bus's route has designated meeting zones along it, though kids can also join when the group passes their house, too. Adults help out at the front of the ride as pilots; at the back to support riders and make sure no one is left behind; and in the middle as crossing supervisors to help everyone navigate intersections safely. Once the students make it to school, they lock up their bikes and get a snack.

The past nine months have been an opportunity to learn what the organization needs to do to scale, said Westman, who would like to expand to 60 elementary schools in five years. He is still running the Rutherford route, but he can't lead the new ones, so he has created operations manuals and training materials for those who want to start a route. There is also a new app that ride leaders use for tasks such as marking attendance and filing incident reports, he told Taproot.

The existing routes have been started by parents, but educators are also expressing interest, Westman said. "I've also had schools specifically reach out to me and say, 'Hey, we as a school, we want a bike bus program here — how can we do it?'"

Westman said he is leveraging data from the school boards to find schools that would potentially be interested in a bike bus. Proximity is a key indicator. "Do the kids in this school generally live within three kilometres, and are they mostly in the neighbourhood, or does this school draw from a very large area and (a bike bus) wouldn't be as impactful?" he said.

Westman registered the organization as Bike Bus Alberta so that he can help get the program going throughout the province. He said he has spoken to interested parents in Calgary and has reached out to a group in Banff that started its own bike bus to see if he can help.

Westman has been working with students at the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta to compile research on the health benefits of bike buses. He is also working on becoming an approved vendor for Edmonton Public Schools and Edmonton Catholic Schools so that he doesn't have to set up a separate program with each new school.

Once schools let out for the summer, Westman said he plans to host rides on the weekends to keep kids in the habit. He said he'll also work on setting up another two to five routes for the new school year.

"We're going to get it ready in the summer, and then in August, we'll do one or two community rides to test out the route and get all the bumps out, and then you're ready to hit the ground running in September," he said.

Westman said he encourages people who are interested in the bike bus concept to reach out to his organization.

"They need to come to me and say, 'We really want this, and here's a bunch of people that really want to help make it happen,' and then I will facilitate."

Bike Bus Alberta is not the only effort to make commuting by bicycle safer and more welcoming. The Bikeology Guild of Canada has launched in Edmonton to encourage more women and girls to ride and to advocate for inclusive cycling infrastructure. The group is putting on its annual Ride of the Fancy Women on June 14.

The Edmonton Bike Coalition also lists a wide variety of group rides.