Biking and Walking to School in Davis

children-biking

by Robb Davis

Adults who grew up in Davis will often harken back to their experience as students noting that “everyone” biked or walked to school in the past.  Most cannot recall when the trend to driving children to school took off, but most would concur that bicycling and walking are at much lower levels than in the past. So, what proportion of students are bicycling or walking to school in Davis?

As part of its Safe Routes to School Program, elementary and junior high schools across the district conducted classroom tallies of how students had arrived at or planned to leave school in in early October, 2013.

In addition to this effort, groups of volunteers and parents who are part of the Davis Bicycles! School Committee conduct monthly counts of bikes at bike racks.  While these counts do not permit an assessment of walking habits, they can be compared to enrollment at the school to estimate the proportion of students bicycling to school.

The following graphs summarize data from the classroom tallies and compare it to bike rack counts.

robb-davis-students-biking-chart

Figure 1 shows the data collected on the morning of October 1 across all elementary schools in the district.  October 1 was a sunny day, with cool morning temperatures—a nearly perfect day for bicycling or walking.  As a result, it is fair to assume that these results represent the high end of what might be expected for each school in terms of the proportion of students walking and biking.

The results are, perhaps, not surprising but interesting nonetheless.  As expected, older students are more likely to bicycle to school but there is little difference by age group for walking.

Further, though the Patwin results are from few observations[1], one can seen that it has overall much higher proportions bicycling and walking than other schools.  This is not surprising given the relatively small “catchment” area of the school and that the school is a true “neighborhood” school with safe access by bike and on foot.

Of some surprise are the Cesar Chavez results.  This school has a Spanish immersion program and attracts students from across town.  Despite this its totals are not far below Pioneer and Montgomery—two neighborhood schools.

Also of interest, Pioneer 4-6 graders have bicycling and walking rates similar to others schools in the district but much lower rates for K-3.  Regular cyclists in Davis hypothesize that this is due to two factors: Mace Boulevard, which acts as a major “safety barrier” for parents and the narrow and heavily trafficked approach to the school.

Figure 2 compares bicycling tally results from these same schools with the maximum rates for biking from the bike rack counts.  Results indicate that bike rack counts are a reasonable proxy for complete tallies.  This is useful because bike rack counts take up no classroom time and only take a few minutes to conduct.  They provide a quick way to assess bicycling and compare trends across the year.

robb-davis-students-biking-chart-2

Finally, Figure 3 shows results for the junior high schools.  The Holmes results are particularly striking with over 60% of students bicycling or walking to school.

robb-davis-students-biking-chart-3

Bike rack counts were only available from Harper and Holmes for the junior highs.

What conclusions can we draw from this data?  Most simply, on a good weather day over half of junior high students and nearly 40% of elementary school students bicycle or walk to school.

Is that good?  Should we be satisfied with these results?  The same data, of course, indicate that more than 60% of elementary and about half of junior high students are driven to school on these days—over 4000 students.

One way to encourage more students to ride and walk is to understand parents’ concerns and assess the challenges experienced by students as they bicycle or ride to school in order to improve conditions and deal with parental concerns.  “Challenges” to encouraging bicycling and walking to school include unsafe intersections or crossings, poor off street access to school property, distance, traffic congestion around schools, approaches that involve heavily trafficked streets (with high speeds) and uncertainty on the part of parents about the best, safest and most expeditious ways to get to school.

To assess these challenges the Davis Safe Routes to School program, working with Alta Planning and Design, volunteers, principals and parents, conducted “Walk and Bike Audits of all elementary and junior high schools in the fall of 2013.  These audits have led to a set of school-specific reports and draft maps.  The reports address major safety challenges and infrastructure improvements that could help mitigate them.  The maps provide suggested routes and approaches to each school.

All project documents are available at http://saferoutesdavis.org.  In addition, over the coming weeks a series of feedback and discussion sessions will be held at each school over the coming weeks.  Figure 4 provides the date and time for each session by school.

robb-davis-students-biking-chart-4If you are a parent or grandparent with a student in one of these schools and would like to work to encourage more bicycling and walking to school, please try to participate in these meetings.

Please contact the City’s Street Smarts Program Director, Rachel Hartsough at RHartsough@cityofdavis.org for more information.

And, if you would like to get more involved in encouraging more bicycling at your student’s school, contact Trish Price (trish@notsonoblepath.com) or Christal Waters (chrystal2waters@yahoo.com)  to learn more about the Davis Bicyles! Schools Committee.

In addition to conducting bike rack counts and participating in the audits, the DB! Schools Committee supports efforts to help children access bicycles and organizes parent volunteers to conduct student bike safety events—“Bike Rodeos”—at each school.



[1] In general these results can be seen as a “census” of student transportation behavior.  Though not shown here, there is very little difference from class to class and thus even a small sample yields a fairly precise estimate of overall school behavior.

Author

  • David Greenwald

    Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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88 comments

  1. My son, who’s been on 2 wheels since he was 3 (okay, almost 4), has ridden his bike to school since kindergarten. (He went to Chavez and Holmes, 1.0 and 1.3 miles from our house, respectively.) We drove him to school on the really rainy days, but we’ve typically been able to count those on one hand each school year.

    He’s now 15-1/2 and has his learner’s permit, and is drive-crazy. He bikes to the high school (or walks, as his bike was stolen recently), though lately we’ve been letting him drive to and from baseball practice just to get more behind-the-wheel time.

    Here’s what I’ve been wondering ever since he was little: will 13 or so years of regarding a bike as the default mode of local transportation stay with him as an adult, or will he look back on biking as something only kids do? Will the lure of the automobile overshadow the concept of maintaining a small carbon footprint? Perhaps the latter, but only until he matures a bit and starts thinking more globally?

    I expect that the answers are as varied as are individual personalities, but I wonder if there are any trends within the jumble of data…

    1. My theory is “money”. When I grew up, one family car, and when I came of age, you took the school bus to school, or used a bicycle, or walked. Since I was into sports where I couldn’t catch the school bus, I walked the ~2 miles from school to home (my bike was stolen in 8th grade, and I perceived family finances as such that I shouldn’t ask for another… another story). In college @ UCD, I had a new bike. Or walked.

      In the early 70’s, most elementary, Jr Hi @ HS students walked or biked.

      Late 80’s and 90’s I noticed that parents felt it necessary to drive their kids to/from school, saying there was too many cars for their children to walk/bike (think Pogo). Many student cars @ DHS were two, maybe 3 years old, and was not uncommon to see a student driven BMW. Some students who lived within 1/4 mile of DHS would take “their” car, and park up to an 1/8th mile away from DHS, as it was cool to drive, and there was enough family income avail to accommodate this.

      Not sure how to get back to all students walking/biking, except in very inclement weather or other compelling reason.

    2. Another purely anecdotal perspective. My children were not nearly as consistent as your son at walking or biking to school. Either their father or I dropped them off on many days. My daughter at 24 is still fairly car dependent although she will walk or use public transportation if readily available. My son at 21 is carless by choice. His preferred modes of transport are walking, skateboarding or his bike with public transportation as his back up.
      I agree with you that this is most likely highly individual and that it would be nice to know, although unlikely to be able to be teased out what the actual determinants of adult behavior are.

    3. Both of my sons rode their bicycles to Holmes and Davis High out of preference. This was in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. They moved out of the house, got jobs and apartments and lived totally on their own while attending UCD and rode bicycles all the time. They are now in their mid-to-late 30s and still love riding bikes and making cycling part of their commute in the Bay Area and NYC. Riding a bike is fun. Fixating on driving a car is a screwed up value system (a system I subscribed to myself in my teen years) that robs you of the joy of being in the elements and moving along with a sense of freedom and connectedness. So, I predict your son will always be drawn back to riding his bike.

  2. Robb’s post with the chart that shows Pioneer has the lowest percentage of kids riding a bike is next to the post about the Davis mom going to trial for killing her kid (just across the street from Pioneer). I’m wondering if Robb has any data from a year ago that shows more kids on bikes (when Pioneer kids didn’t have to ride by the scenes of multiple murders on Glide behind the school and on Cowell a half mile away).

    Jim wrote:

    > My son, who’s been on 2 wheels since he was 3 (okay, almost 4),
    > has ridden his bike to school since kindergarten.

    Did he ride alone to kindergarten? When I was a kid this was common, but I have not heard of a parent letting a kid ride (or walk) alone to kindergarten in 20+ years.

    > We drove him to school on the really rainy days,

    Lucky kid, when I was younger we just wore rain coats (almost every kid in our school had the exact same yellow rain slicker)…

    > He’s now 15-1/2 and has his learner’s permit, and is drive-crazy.

    This is rare, since few kids today are “drive-crazy” (compared to 99.9% of the boys 40 years ago).
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/12/131217-four-theories-why-teens-drive-less-today/

    > Here’s what I’ve been wondering ever since he was little: will 13 or so years
    > of regarding a bike as the default mode of local transportation stay with him
    > as an adult, or will he look back on biking as something only kids do?

    When you are 16-25 and want to feel older most kids tend to drive more and ride less (a 16 year old in a 4Runner feel a lot older (and has more girls interested in him) than the 16 year old still riding his BMX bike). As he get’s older the 13 years of muscle memory will still be there and like most people that did a LOT of riding as kids he will probably start hanging out with people who mountain bike and/or are in to road biking/triathlon/cyclocross etc.

    > Will the lure of the automobile overshadow the concept of maintaining
    > a small carbon footprint? Perhaps the latter, but only until he matures
    > a bit and starts thinking more globally?

    Spending a lot of time in the Bay Area (where rents are just crazy and young people are having a hard time making ends meet) it seems like most (but not all) the young people riding and talking about a “small carbon footprint” are the ones that can’t afford to own a car (or take Uber) The young GSB grads I know that have had a great few years tend to have cool cars, but these days leave them at home and get around with Uber.

    I expect that the answers are as varied as are individual personalities, but I wonder if there are any trends within the jumble of data

    1. My nephew is attending Pioneer, it’s two blocks from us. There aren’t a lot of bikers and it is a shame. We’re guilty of that too, it’s easier to drop him off on my way into town than to have him walk or bike.

      1. David, in what way is it easier? If he is biking or riding himself it would seem that you would have one less morning “to-do” than you currently have. Am I missing something?

      2. I actually think the point David made is at the basis of getting more kids on their bikes. It’s the more common problem of doing things for kids instead of training them to do for themselves. We’ve noticed the enhanced Helicopter Parent syndrome take its toll over the last 30 years. It’s easier to just do their laundry, make their lunches, cook for them, do their dishes, on and on. Kids need to participate in all aspects of family life and that includes transportation. While I realize Davis traffic is a little crazier than it was 30 years ago because today’s young drivers apparently learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto, there is no reason why kids shouldn’t be willing to ride their bikes a couple of miles to school unless, of course, there are physical disabilities or the distance is over 1 mile for elementary, or 3 miles for the junior or senior high kids. Kids can be trained to be very good defensive riders.

        1. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies … or in this case our children’s worst enemy. Paraphrasing the United Negro College Fund, “Self sufficiency is a terrible thing to waste.”

    2. “Did he ride alone to kindergarten?”

      He always had a parent along through 3rd grade, since the idea of him navigating 8th Street and Anderson Road by himself was way too scary for all of us. In 3rd grade he started asking me to turn around early, first at the bike path into the school grounds, then a block from school as the year progressed. In 4th grade he and a friend rode mostly by themselves, sometimes with his friend’s mom. By then we were comfortable that the boys could manage the traffic at 8th and Anderson without adult supervision.

      In my years of accompanying him to school, I only saw a couple of kids riding by themselves prior to 4th grade. None in K or 1st, one or two in 2nd, a few more in 3rd. After that I have no data. 🙂

    3. South of Davis – I have 2011 data for the Pioneer overall (not broken down by grade). 24% of children rode bikes or walked on the day of the tally. It too was a sunny cool morning. 2013 data show that 30% of children rode or walked. So… there does not appear to be any effect from the incident.

  3. “Challenges” to encouraging bicycling and walking to school include unsafe intersections or crossings, poor off street access to school property, distance, traffic congestion around schools, approaches that involve heavily trafficked streets (with high speeds) and uncertainty on the part of parents about the best, safest and most expeditious ways to get to school.

    I think the main problem is the social pressure on parents to be overly protective of their kids. This pressure feeds on itself. If all the other kids are getting a “safe” ride to school, and you let your kid walk or ride his bike, and he crashes his bike or in some way gets hurt, the blame all falls on you as “an irresponsible parent.”

    That said, I think it is wise to reduce safety concerns where they reasonably exist. One of those is a crosswalk over a heavily trafficked street on the way to school where there is no crossing guard and adding one is cost prohibitive. One parent wrote a letter to The Enterprise not too long ago which gave voice to this:

    Last week, my 8-year-old daughter and I attempted to cross Anderson Road at Amherst Drive, using the crosswalk. While fully in the crosswalk, in broad daylight, two cars sped through in front of us, each going at least or over the speed limit of 35 mph. Unfortunately, this is not unusual. It was frightening at the time, and more so knowing that this crosswalk will soon be filled with children going to and from schools. My daughter attends César Chávez Elementary and uses this crosswalk. I urge the city of Davis to upgrade this crossing, crucial for access both to Chávez and Willett elementary schools: Drivers clearly do not see painted lines and need flashing lights, similar to those at Russell Boulevard and California Street, to signal them to stop for pedestrians.

    I agree completely with this letter. My experience as a driver on Russell is that the flashing lights at the California Street crossing are very effective and Davis should install the same infrastructure* at school crossings like the one across Anderson mentioned by the letter writer. I am sure there are other sites near other schools where such lights would be a great benefit to safety.

    *I’m sure cost is a problem. I would guess that UCD paid for the flashing lights at California Street across Russell. That is just all the more reason to freeze total compensation. We will never be able to function properly as a city if we keep increasing the compensation of city workers. We just bumped up salaries by 2% last week, increased medical premium expenses by 11.1% (half of that is covered by the employees) and we will again increase the cost of pensions next July 1 by far more than we can afford.

      1. hp — You are calling BS on something I said was a guess? Have you no tact at all? I’m calling AH on you.

        “I would guess that UCD paid for the flashing lights at California Street across Russell.”

        I based my guess on the 4-5-2012 2012 staff report, which said:

        “The estimated cost of this improvement is approximately $14,000 to $20,000 depending on the possibility of using the existing poles. Currently, there is no funding to cover this cost. Staff is contacting UCD for potential cost sharing.”

        I never found any follow-up report which explained where the funds came from. Hence my guess.

        But now that you have so rudely called me a bullish*tter, it turns out you were mistaken. I have now found where the money came from in the 6-12-2012 staff report:

        “Estimated cost of this improvement is approximately $15,000. UC Davis has agreed to fund half the cost of the improvements (up to $10,000) upon completion of the installation. Based on cost estimates, UC Davis’ cost share will be $8,000, the amount in the appropriation request. The City’s cost share includes staff time and the use of existing poles, signs and markings plus approximately $2,000 budgeted in the existing Signing & Striping program (7256).”

        Advice: don’t be so rude for no good reason. Just say you think I was mistaken in my guess. Or if you know for a fact I was mistaken, then prove that with a source.

        1. Just so I understand the “rules’…. you can “guess” with no corroboration, but if the guess is challenged, the challenger needs to provide proof/documentation? I could, as I know that in studying the site, preparing plans and specs for the work, the City paid the lion’s share of the costs, and the university paid a token amount for the installation/materials.

          The fair conclusion from the post you made was that the city paid nada. Spin it as you wish.

          1. That is, the original post… your quote of the staff report did clarify that, and I appreciate it.

            Lost a beloved four-legged family member last week, and I have run hot/cold on emotions, and I do apologize for the exact words I used. My fault.

        2. BTW, the improvements you reference were not the first signal installation at the site… it was a re-do. UCD paid nothing for the first. It was the first that I was knowledgeable about. Hence the references to the existing poles.

      2. “I’ve always followed my father’s advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble. ” — John Wayne.

        Maybe we can just discuss things without the characterizations?

    1. Rifkin: I think the main problem is the social pressure on parents to be overly protective of their kids. This pressure feeds on itself. If all the other kids are getting a “safe” ride to school, and you let your kid walk or ride his bike, and he crashes his bike or in some way gets hurt, the blame all falls on you as “an irresponsible parent.”

      See comment below on the increase in school choice options in Davis that may not have existed when you were in school.

      1. School choice for the purpose of academic immersion and academic magnet programs makes a lot of sense. School choice for reasons other than participation is specific academic programs should be highly, highly discouraged. That would mean that more kids would go to their local neighborhood school with the kids from their neighborhood. More walking and more biking would be the result. Better interpersonal social skills would be the result as well.

        One step that should be taken as soon as possible is to make the High School parking lot a paid lot. UCD charges $7.00 per day for its parking lots. That seems like an appropriate daily parking fee for DHS students who choose to drive to school and park rather than walking or biking to school. For those who insist on continuing to drive, the parking fee would encourage car pooling. Students with disabilities would be exempted.

        1. “Students with disabilities would be exempted.”

          Not that I disagree, but I am 100% sure that the number of students with “disabilities” would vastly increase.

          See “National Epidemic of Horrible People Pretending to Be Disabled

          Read more: National Epidemic of Horrible People Pretending to Be Disabled” in TIME magazine.

          http://business.time.com/2013/10/12/national-epidemic-of-horrible-people-pretending-to-be-disabled/#ixzz2qA8ymDaB

          Here are a few quotes:

          “The Walt Disney Company felt compelled to change its disabled guest policy at theme parks partly due to “abuse of the system.” The announcement came after reports surfaced that wealthy guests were paying wheelchair-riding tour guides top dollar so that the group could use the line-skipping privileges granted to the disabled at Disney theme parks. …

          “Last spring, over the course of a mere four hours, authorities in Oakland, Calif., confiscated 13 handicapped placards being used illegally by drivers. That’s out of a total of 70 placards they came across, meaning nearly one in five was fraudulent. …

          “A report in Seattle published over the summer estimated that one in eight drivers using disabled parking placards is doing so fraudulently, costing the city $1.4 million annually.

          “Drivers with such placards get to park for free in Providence, R.I., where it just so happens that there has been an influx of cars with disabled parking passes near train stations and bus stops. …

          “Suspicions of disabled placard abuse have gotten so bad in New Jersey—where more than 500,000 people have special placard and license plate privileges—that the state introduced tougher regulations last spring.”

          1. Rifkin: Not that I disagree, but I am 100% sure that the number of students with “disabilities” would vastly increase.

            Another example of Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

        2. Making the DHS lot a paid lot will further reinforce the ‘class divide’ of the wealthy students who drive their mommy’s BMW to school and couldn’t care less about how much it costs to park. I do think it is a good way to raise money, though. Let the rich pay more of their share.

      2. WDF 8:48 pm: “See comment below on the increase in school choice options in Davis that may not have existed when you were in school.”

        See my comment made on this 10 hours and 11 minutes before you decided I didn’t consider magnet schools:

        Rich 10:37 am: “… young children who have to ride more than 1.5 miles to a magnet school likely would not be good candidates. But for all the rest, I think my idea would work.”

        One difference today with my childhood experience is kids have much shorter distances to go to junior high school. Back in the mid-late 1970s, only Holmes was open. Those of us who lived in West Davis had a 4.6 mile round trip bike ride every day–rain or shine. Post Prop 13, there was no bus. I don’t remember any massing of cars on Drexel Drive, the way one sees today at Holmes and at every school in town.

        And FWIW, someone suggested that people are wealthier now–which in general is true–and they have two cars, allowing them to drive their kids to school in one of them: Every two-parent family I knew back then also had two cars. As my own father died when I was 7 and my mom did not re-marry, we only had one car. But most had two, one for each adult.

        1. The Feb. 21, 2013 school board meeting had a demographic report presented that showed the following percentages of students at each elementary who lived in that school’s attendance area:

          Birch Lane: 57%
          Korematsu: 61%
          Montgomery: 52%
          NDE: 62%
          Patwin: 64%
          Pioneer: 66%
          Willet: 64%

          Next month another demographic report will come out, and I suspect the number of within-district transfers will creep up, only exacerbating the issue of cycling from that factor.

          1. wdf, does the report give any indication of what portion of those reverse percentages are the result of enrollment in magnet/immersion programs?

          2. Matt Williams: It’s all available in the agenda package for that meeting, Feb. 21, 2013, Agenda item V. e. I would post a direct link for you, but in the past, such links to that archive haven’t worked. This might be a good starting point: link

          3. For elementary aged kids–especially those K-3 and those with some physical challenges–riding more than 1 mile on a bike without escort is probably a bad idea, especially if it includes crossing a busy street.

            But I think some might be underestimating the capabilities of older children to ride a bike safely a good ways. I have seen a few young boys, about age 12, riding on their own bikes with their parents accompanying them to Winters and back (28 to 30 miles).

            I think it is unfortunate that so many kids, who would benefit from the exercise, are not riding their bikes to school. But parents have to think it’s a good idea and they have to be convinced it’s safe. Group rides to school with a parent escort would probably help.