Encouraging Kids to walk and bike to school is a daunting task when faced with the realities of 50+ years of car culture shoved down our collective throats and the rising tide of fear around “stranger danger”. These factors and others have contributed to a major drop in the numbers of walking or biking children who live within 2 miles of school. Thirty years ago nearly half of all such students walked or biked to school, while today a scarce 15% walk or bike. Statistics like these can make even the staunchest of bicycle/pedestrian advocates cry in their water bottles, until a success story like Rieke Elementary School comes along to dry those tears.
Rieke is one of 25 Portland schools taking part in the City of Portland Office of Transportation Safer Routes to School program. One of the key players at Rieke is Smart Trips coordinator Taylor Sutton, who has devised an ingenious program to help inspire children to walk and bike to school called pollution punch-cards.
Here is how it works: each child is issued a punch-card with their name, teacher and grade, and for every time they walk, bike, bus or car-pool to school on a “Walking Wednesday” they get a punch on their card. Once they fill a card up, they are issued a certificate bearing witness to their efforts and are entered into a monthly drawing at their school. The response has been overwhelming, in fact, on a few Wednesdays, Taylor, our faithful volunteer Sarah and I have had trouble punching all of the cards in time for the kids to avoid the tardy bell.
With all of these kids walking to school, Rieke is also host to a couple of walking school buses.
Named the Red and Blue line after their MAX counterparts, the Walking School Buses wind their way through the neighborhoods surrounding Rieke dropping the kids off at school safely and saving their parents a ton of time on hectic weekday mornings, as well as keeping a bunch of cars out of the parking lot and off the road.
