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Is the Walking School Bus stalled in an evolutionary cul-de-sac? David Engwicht In 1992 I proposed the idea of the Walking Bus in Reclaiming Our Cities & Towns (also published as Towards an Eco-City). It was just on of many zany ideas I threw into the air as seeds. I was as surprised as anyone that the Walking Bus was the one seed that took root and self-propagated across the globe. But as inventor of the Walking Bus, I believe it is time to ask a crucial question: Has the Walking Bus stalled in an evolutionary cul-de-sac? This article argues that in many circumstances the Walking Bus has
outlived its usefulness and in some circumstances has become counter-productive.
It argues that it is time to let the Walking Bus evolve and give birth
to some evolutionary adaptations. What was my original goal in proposing the Walking Bus? Was it to get kids walking to school? Was it to reduce traffic levels? It was all of these things. But there was a deeper goal: to give kids independent mobility. In many cities, children are being robbed of their independent mobility, which has profound consequences for their psychological and emotional development. In the same book in which I proposed the Walking Bus, I wrote:
In my next book (Street Reclaiming) I expanded on this theme:
A sense of place is an affinity with the physical environment. The elements that make up our environment cease to merely be functional elements. A tree ceases to be just a tree if it is where we stopped off after school to pick its fruit, climb, or steal our first kiss. That tree becomes the repository of our memories. Each time we see it, or conjure it up in our imagination, we "come home". It enfolds us, embraces us, nurtures us and tell us who we are and where we belong. Transportation is not just about getting from point A to B, particularly for children. In a private conversation with Jan Gehl he told me that it use to take him 8 minutes to walk to school and 2 hours to walk home. His mother would say, 'Jan, why does it only take you 8 minutes to get to school but two hours to get home?' Jan said, 'The 8 minutes was a trip. But what happened in the two hours was the stuff of life.' If children are to grow emotionally and into healthy independent adults, they must undertake an increasing number of these journeys and adventures independently, away from adult supervision. This is not to say that they should not also enjoy going on walking adventures with their parents and other adults. There must be a healthy balance. Independent mobility is also essential if children are to learn how
to manage risk. Adventures are not adventures unless there is an element
of risk. The greater the risk, the greater the adventure. Facing risk
and either overcoming it or succumbing is character building. It teaches
us about our limits and stretches our capabilities. Some developmental
psychologists have suggested that the modern phenomenon of trying to
shield children from all risk has delayed this essential risk-taking
experimentation until adolescence where it is potentially much more
destructive because of the type of risks involved and because many adolescents
have not developed the skills to deal with risk. All programs, including the Walking Bus, are culturally and context sensitive. I invented the Walking Bus because I saw a situation in my own city of Brisbane where parents drove their children to school because there was too much traffic - much of it other parent's driving their kids to school. I saw parents saying they would not let their kids walk because of 'stranger danger' - caused by the fact that there were not enough people walking to make the walking environment feel safe. I asked myself how we could break this vicious cycle. My answer was the Walking Bus. But the Walking Bus was only an intermediate step to the longer-term goal of giving kids back their independent mobility. The Walking Bus only gives children a taste of independent mobility. The child is transporting themselves under their own steam; they may be given permission to say when they think it is safe to cross the road, and they may even be given permission to race ahead and explore. But they were still being chauffeured by an adult. So if the Walking Bus is to do its job, there must come a phase when it is no longer needed and children can claim their independent mobility. In some cultural contexts it is inappropriate to start a Walking Bus at all. I have had Europeans say to me, 'Don't bring your Walking Bus to Europe. Our kids already have independent mobility and a Walking Bus would be a retrograde step.' So the Walking Bus is only appropriate in particular contexts. For example, it is used in some cities where children are intimidated by street gangs. But in other contexts it can be counter-productive. Limitations of official programs The Walking Bus also has some other limitations when it goes from an informal arrangement into an official program. While the Walking Bus is an informal program it tends to work very well. Parents simply make a deal with each other to take it in turns, or one parent offers to walk other children. But the moment the Walking Bus turns into an official program, it creates some significant difficulties, particularly in litigious and risk-adverse cultures. One organizer told me that when she launched the Walking Bus Program she had over 100 people volunteer as drivers. But by the time they had completed their compulsory training and submitted to exhaustive background checks she only had 3 drivers left. In such cultural settings it is probably best that the program be left as self-organizing, and that the official part of the program is simply providing the infrastructure for people to self-organize. In my experience it is best to give the kids an incentive to organize themselves into Walking Buses. As noted earlier, in the informal stage of the Walking Bus, children
may be given greater freedoms to choose when to cross the road, or to
even race ahead and explore. But the moment the program becomes formalized,
these freedoms must be curtailed. In addition, informal Walking Buses
have a greater chance of simply dissolving once parents think the children
have the skills to make their own way and that the environment is safe
enough for them to do so. I have argued that the Walking Bus is an intermediate step to the larger goal of independent mobility for children. The danger with intermediate steps is that we often get so preoccupied with the intermediate step we forget what our original goal was. And we forget to ask the question as to whether there is a more creative way to undertake the intermediate step. In innovation and creativity classes that I teach, I argue that as much as possible, all means should be the ends you seek in seed form. The essential DNA of your eventual creation must be present in the means you use. And it is precisely at this point that I think there is room for improvement in the Walking Bus. The Walking Bus does not have enough of the DNA of independent mobility inherent in the structure. The following ideas are experiments that Creative Communities International is currently involved in. They may give some hints as to how the Walking Bus may evolve and give birth to some new evolutionary adaptations. Red Sneaker Routes One feature of the new evolutionary adaptations of the Walking Bus should be a wider range of choices about how much independence is given to each child. Red Sneaker Routes seeks to give parents greater choice and flexibility - the child may walk as part of a Walking Bus or they may walk with friends or they may walk alone. Regardless of which choice is made, Red Sneaker Routes provides a safer walk environment and an overall increase in community surveillance of walking routes. Red Sneaker Routes starts by mapping walking routes that are most likely to be used by kids. (More about this shortly.) These routes become known as Red Sneaker Routes. Parents, citizens, businesses, organizations, and school classes are invited to adopt street corners and crossing points along this route. Residents along the route are also encouraged to adopt the space outside their home. These people and groups are encouraged to have a human presence at their adopted points whenever possible. But more importantly, they must do something to personalize this space. This may be a special chair, a garden, a sculpture, something to display children's art, etc. Those who adopt the space outside their home put a red sneaker on their front gate or fence. Those adopting a space are given training materials about how 'intrigue' and 'uncertainty' can be used to slow cars and make streets safer. Red Sneaker Routes is a static form of the Walking Bus. Instead of one adult walking with the children the entire length of the route, multiple individuals provide surveillance for very short sections of the journey (the adults stay static). We think this arrangement has many advantages over the Walking Bus. It actually works actively on creating the kind of environments (social and physical) in which children can enjoy independent mobility for a whole range of trips. It is therefore much more consistent with the end goal of increasing independent mobility. The other major benefit is that it actually helps create the kind of environment that motivates children to walk (and adults as well!). Personalizing the Red Sneaker Routes with interesting seats, art, and gardens makes the journey even more of an adventure. (Interestingly, it also helps to slow down the traffic, making streets safer.) Adults tend to treat the journey to and from school as a utilitarian transportation task. For kids walking it is everything but this. Walking is a chance to talk with their friends, have an adventure, interact with nature, let of steam, make discoveries and learn, be independent from adults, etc. In this regard the current fad of calling these programs 'Safe Routes to School' betrays the adult-centric way we have been approaching this issue. 'Safe Routes' is transport-task and utilitarian focused. It is hoped that those who adopt the Red Sneaker Routes approach will be much more kid-centric. This means the best routes are not those that are the shortest distance between home and school, but those that provide the most opportunities for adventures, learning and stimulation. The Red Sneaker Routes may therefore be the longest way to school and must involve the kids in mapping the most interesting way. Traffic Tamers or Red Sneaker Week To even begin to tackle the school traffic issue, we must understand how the habit of driving kids to school is formed in the first place. Imagine a busy household on the first day of school for the first child. The school is six blocks away from home, but the parent has never walked from home to the school (in fact they walk very little in their neighborhood). They try to map in their mind which way they would go if they were to walk. But they have no idea which way would be the safest way, or where the safest crossing points would be. It is much easier just to put the child in the car and drive them. Besides, it may takes several weeks of walking with the child before they would feel comfortable to let the child walk by themselves. This is a significant investment of their very busy time. The child reaches the end of primary school and the parent has still not invested the time to map the best route and teach their child to walk. To change this habit, the household must be given a window of opportunity, the motivation and the support to undertake this task of working out the best route and training the child how to walk this route safely. This is not likely to happen with a single-day symbolic event. In 2001 we ran an experimental program in Brisbane, Australia, called Red Sneaker Week. We set kids the challenge of walking to school for a whole week. (You were deemed to have walked providing you walked the last 10 minutes of the journey.) During this week they documented their adventures in a class Adventure Book. They earned Frequent Walker Points for each day they walked and the class with the most points won a pizza party. This program 'forced' many households to invest a whole week training their children how to walk. In the adventure books we got stories of how parents gradually gave their children more freedom as the week progressed. By the end of the week many parents felt confident enough to let their kids keep walking. We got each school to designate drop-off or meeting points about 10 minutes walk from the school. In this way we encouraged informal walking buses. We are currently in the process of evolving Red Sneaker Week into Traffic
Tamers. Traffic Tamers will be a much more comprehensive program that
will include kids 'Taming-n-Training' adults by getting them to turn
their cars into Pace Cars (cars that drive within the speed limit and
stop to let pedestrians cross). Traffic Tamers will empower both children
and adults to create their own local program to tame streets and give
children increased independent mobility. I highly recommend that those committed to introducing a Walking Bus program should keep the Walking Buses informal and concentrate on providing support and incentives for children and adults to set up their own Walking Buses. Other programs that may help kids graduate more quickly from Walking Buses should also be explored. For those not yet committed to a Walking Bus program, I would urge you to invent a more holistic approach or work with Creative Communities in developing these new approaches. There is still room for informal Walking Buses within these new approaches. Adults and kids sharing the same walking adventures can be very enriching for everyone. However, the new programs that evolve out the Walking Bus should provide opportunities for kids to gain increasing levels of independence, not just for the school trip, but also for other trips in their neighborhood. |
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