Category: walk to school

A glimpse of progressive transportation

Parents, students walk to Olde Providence Elementary last Wednesday

After my Saturday column about kids and walking to school, I got a meaty e-mail from a reader who lived for many years in Oregon, but who has moved back to North Carolina. She loves it here, but longs for the more progressive planning and transportation options of her former city. She points out:

1. The Safe Routes to School bill passed in 2004 or 5, I think (we moved back to N.C. after 14 years in Lake Oswego, OR, so my memory may be failing me). This bill requires that cities, counties, and school districts all work together to provide safe walking or bike riding routes to school. Many cities/school districts now have route maps; the walking school bus you mentioned is a daily occurrence, and parents who no longer sit in long lines to drop off their children in the car have found that they get to work faster.
2. Every 5th grader in the state now receives bicycle safety training, originally started by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (of which I was a member). I participated in the “graduation,” and was still surprised to witness children giving their signals correctly, stopping at stop signs…and then turning without looking both ways! The trainer said that at this age, their brains cannot fully detect distance, and training in the 5th grade is the perfect starting point.
3. The Bicycle Bill passed in 1975 and requires that anytime a new roadway is built or reconfigured (not resurfaced), that 3-6 ft bike lanes must be added. It’s the law. Statewide. [Note from Mary: In Charlotte the developers’ lobby stoutly opposes city efforts to require bike lanes on collector streets, because of the “added cost” of bike lanes.]
4. “Cycle Oregon” is a yearly, quite expensive, bike tour covering different routes through Oregon. This ride is effectively changing the minds of the anti-cyclist, especially in rural areas because of the way Cycle Oregon has approached the ride. Simply, for each stopover in whatever small town they arrive, that town gets a pot of $$$$$ (comes out of the entry fee). Now towns vie to be a part of the ride and cyclists find tents, food, music, set up for them by the locals and motorists honking and waving, rather than trying to run them down.
5. Each city in the Portland metro region has a transportation advisory board (of which I was a member/chair for several years); and each city has to strive to meet alternative transportation goals set forth by law from the state, county, and METRO (regional government).
6. The Willamette Pedestrian (yes…I was also a member) Coalition is a nonprofit striving for safer walking access.
7. ACTS Oregon is the Alliance for Community Traffic Safety (of which I was a member representing my city), comprising police, fire, EMT, motorcycle, light rail, bus, truck, bicycle, pedestrian, disabled, “safe routes to school,” train, school, city, county, ODOT. Any group interested in moving people safely is welcome to join. In any given conference, members can participate in activities such as sitting in a big rig to understand where the blind spots are, taking a tour by bike in that town to check out their cycling infrastructure, hearing a talk by Southern Pacific on how to avoid train accidents, attending the awards given to police who go “above the call of duty,” etc. Bringing myriad groups together to discuss safety effectively put an end to bickering about whose safety is more important.

The attitude toward cyclists and pedestrians is not perfect in Oregon – do not think I’m talking alternative transportation utopia! There is still conflict. That said, in Portland alone, over 10,000 people/day cross the bridges (counters have been set up for years) on bike/foot to get in and out of the city, and road expansion has been minimized because they’ve added light rail, trolleys, sidewalks, and bike paths. The suburbs are even connected.

Personally, even though we lived in a suburb of Portland, we were able to live car-free for the 14 years there because I could plop my bike on the bus, ride the first leg (fairly dangerous stretch that now has a light rail line with bike access running alongside it—happened AFTER we left), get off the bus at the Sellwood Bridge and ride the rest of the way (2 miles) alongside the Willamette River on a dedicated bike/ped highway. Daily I passed fathers/mothers on their bikes with their children on bikes or carriers on the way to school/work. Those children were ALWAYS smiling!

Sorry to be so wordy; moving back to NC has been a blessing because both our families live here. I don’t miss the rain in Oregon, but I do miss the power that the public had to ensure that every man, woman, and child had safe access, whether they were in a car, on foot, on a bicycle, or in a boat! We also had to buy a car and I’ve gained 10 pounds since I stopped riding my bike everywhere!

Note: I’ve seen a lot of letters to the editor about light rail, cycling, etc., and have never wanted to respond because I’ll get told “move back to Oregon” by other readers. I don’t want to move back, but I would like to see the Charlotte metro region move into the future!

Keep up the discussion!

Can’t walk to school? Whose fault, really?

To everyone who wants to blame:
— the school board
— the health department
— the county commissioners
— school desegregation
— me
— the Observer’s editorial board
— whoever else is handy …

… for the fact that in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, as in many communities around the nation, it’s difficult for most kids to walk to school, I offer the following complexities for your consideration. (If you’re new to this, first visit my posting from yesterday, “Why it’s not easy to walk to school,” and the comments on it.) Now, here are a few things to ponder, among the many realities that affect the situation:
— Until the late 1990s, the city of Charlotte didn’t require developers to build many sidewalks in their new developments.
— The city’s budget for retrofitting streets with sidewalks, while expanding, is pitifully inadequate.
— In North Carolina counties have no responsibility for streets or roads or sidewalks. Either the city builds and maintains them, or the state does. The state’s attitude used to be to discourage any sidewalks built outside a municipal jurisdiction. Much of what’s now inside Charlotte was in unincorporated Mecklenburg County when it was built (and later was annexed). Thus, few sidewalks.

— Most of suburban Charlotte is pedestrian-hostile, with wide and busy intersections, few pedestrian lights and crosswalks, long blocks and little connectivity.

— Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, in its building designs and site-size requirements, followed state requirements based on a national organization, meaning those requirements exist all over the country. Only in recent years have some N.C. requirements become “guidelines” which school systems can occasionally bypass. The requirements included huge sites: e.g. 18 acres for elementary schools, 60 for high schools. CMS, to its credit, is building on smaller sites when it can, and building more multistory schools, which need slightly smaller footprint. And it’s trying to keep walkability (and transit) in mind for newer schools.
— CMS has been harangued for years by the anti-tax crowd to be more economical in its school building, so like many large systems slammed with growth, it moved to larger (I would say too large) schools. Larger schools mean students must come from farther away, making it harder for them to walk, especially in Charlotte’s pedestrian-hostile suburban areas.
— The appropriate elected officials to blame for crowded schools are the county commissioners. They’re the ones who allocate money — or don’t — to build new schools and maintain old ones. The school board asks, but usually doesn’t receive all it asks for.

— While some comments have noted the can’t-walk-to-school situation isn’t universal, it is common across America, even where there was no school busing for integration. Desegregation is essentially a red herring in this debate. Further, even when there was plenty of busing for integration, some kids attended schools nearby for at least part of their schooling.
Yes, it’s theoretically possible a push for more walkable schools might have arisen earlier if all children were attending schools nearby. But I’ve lived in Charlotte 30 years and the whole “walkability” movement — irrespective of school kids — was nonexistent for most of that time.

Why it’s not easy to walk to school

“Why was it necessary to create a job in the health dept. to encourage kids to walk to schools? Isn’t that something a principal/teachers/student nurse could communicate to the parents?”

Good question, from a comment on the previous posting. The situation is complicated. A few administrators at schools here (and other cities as well) don’t want kids walking to school. They think it’s unsafe. They think kids already have bus rides so why would they want to walk? In addition, many principals spend their time trying to make sure kids are learning and teachers are teaching. How students arrive at school — as long as it’s not causing immediate problems — is way, way down the list. I wish the case were otherwise, but it’s not realistic to think that will change.

And school nurses? Most school nurses are assigned to multiple schools and barely have time to turn around, must less launch campaigns to encourage walking.

But there are other problems, too, that even the principals who DO want kids to walk or bike can’t surmount: Lack of sidewalks. Lack of crosswalks. Lack of midblock stoplights on long, long blocks. Lack of bike lanes. Lack of crossing guards. Those policies and decisions are not within a principal’s authority, but reside with the City of Charlotte.

And it’s even more complicated. Plenty of schools were built and designed for car- and-bus-only transportation. They’re not in pedestrian-friendly settings. Here’s a good example: Unless things have changed in the last couple of years, Greenway Park Elementary sits right next to the McAlpine Greenway, yet there’s no pedestrian connection to the greenway. The school, like many, sits so far back from the road and its sidewalk that the whole setting conveys a subliminal message of “Don’t walk here.” Technically, of course, you can walk to that school. But it wouldn’t be very efficient or pleasant.

Older schools — Eastover, Myers Park Traditional, Davidson Middle, Midwood School, the old Wilmore School (now used for offices) — were built when it was expected that kids would walk to school. That fell out of favor, all over the country.

School designs for the past 40 years had almost nothing to do with whether the assignment zones were neighborhood-school or crosstown busing. You see the same styles all over the country, not just in Charlotte. They have to do with state school design guidelines (influenced by national standards), traffic engineering and the architectural mode and practices of the day when they were built.

Reversing all the policies that combine to create an anti-walking environment is a huge task. I don’t wany my school principals having to tackle it. They have another mission.