Who Powers Portland’s Bike and Walk School Buses?

Aug 24, 2023

ByEllee ThalheimerPhotography byThomas TealAugust 28, 2023Published in the Fall 2023 issue ofPortland Monthly

Sam Balto leads a bike bus through the Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood.

Image: Thomas Teal

A kindergartner near the rear pumps his pedals as if he’s in the Tour de France. “Bicycle Race” by Queen cranks from a speaker. We pass two brawny men in front of a gym, who wave and applaud.

“That’s so awesome!” one says.

The muscly guy is right. It is so awesome. Every Friday, Emily Essley shepherds a convoy of bicycling kids and parents down a 15-minute route to Creston Elementary School in Southeast Portland, picking up riders at strategic stops along the way. On this drizzly day, the rain has tamped down participation from what can be 15 kids and parents. Nearby, another mom leads a walking bus to Creston with the same approach.

Portland is ground zero of the bike bus and walking bus movement in the United States, with 15 active bike buses, mostly at local elementary schools, save one at a middle school. As a mom of two school-age kids in Portland, I am curious to tag along and learn about this craze taking hold in pockets of the city.

Bike buses are not a new phenomenon. Around 2010, grassroots bike buses gained momentum at Portland elementary schools like Sabin and Beach, but enthusiasm waned after a couple of years as volunteer efforts fizzled out. When schools went online in 2020, bike buses became nonexistent.

But now bike buses have reemerged as an antidote to our fragmented postpandemic communities. In 2021, Barcelona’s wildly successful bicibús movement kicked off the trend internationally. The 2023 Bike Bus Summit in Spain hosted activists from a half dozen different countries, with Oregonians representing the United States. In Portland, the popularity has spread from schools to the state legislature with the Bike Bus Bill (House Bill 3014), that passed this summer.

The imagination of Sam Balto, a physical education teacher and bike bus organizer at Alameda Elementary, was captured by the bicibús rage. He started his own weekly bike bus in the spring of 2022, which grew to include hundreds of people. He wielded his TikTok savvy to recruit participants, inspire other bike buses, and catch national attention: “Bikes create freedom!” he says in one TikTok video showing gaggles of kids on bikes. “The kids are having a great time powering themselves.” National media soon followed. NBC reported on Alameda’s bike bus to seven million viewers. Correspondent Jacob Ward commented, “The thing that sticks after so much stress and sorrow and loneliness the last few years is watching all these kids floating to school on a vast ocean of joy.” (You’re the one crying.)

“I could say that I lead the bike bus for all the right reasons. But really it’s just a lot of fun riding to school together." —Emily Essley

Balto’s videos resonated with parents across Portland, some of whom, like Essley, responded by organizing their own bike buses. “I could say that I lead the bike bus for all the right reasons. But really it’s just a lot of fun riding to school together,” she says. Her daughter, Lily, a second grader, echoes her ethos: “My favorite thing about the bike bus is riding with friends.”

Portland Public Schools families are particularly amenable to bike buses because the district provides bus transportation only to elementary students who live more than a mile from their neighborhood school (or 1.5 miles for middle schoolers), leaving many parents on their own, usually to join the snarl of vehicle traffic.

Getting kids to school can be complicated. Just that morning, before our bike bus pushed off, a large man with a full lumberjack beard wearing a small sequined backpack cycled up to our meeting spot. A little girl pedaled behind him like a duckling.

“We wouldn’t miss the last bike bus of the year, but we were up late last night,” the dad said, with a sick younger child. “Can you ride Delilah into school?”

“Of course,” said Essley. She stuffed the glittery backpack into her own cavernous bag—on a cargo bike resplendent with fake flowers and streamers. “That’s part of the reason we do this.”

Some days nearly a third of the students at Alameda Elementary take the bike bus.

Image: Thomas Teal

As a longtime Portland cyclist, I’m no stranger to bike fun. But a bike bus has a special kind of magic: it reduces fossil fuels; it gets kids exercise and improves concentration; it likely addresses absenteeism. And at its heart, it allows people to connect and have a good time together after years of pandemic separation.

For me, bike and walking buses invoke several simultaneous feelings. I am invigorated by the supportive energy. I feel immense gratitude toward volunteers like Essley, who positively impact their communities immeasurably. And I feel tired. Oregon, like many states, doesn’t fully fund its schools. You could blame the state’s antitax legislation in the ’90s or pandemic enrollment attrition or district dysfunction. But parents and teachers are left holding the bag. I see it in my role as vice president of the PTA at my kids’ school. Volunteers do everything from lunch duty and weeding school grounds to running science fairs and stapling materials for overworked teachers.

Bike buses mean that volunteers do transportation, too, on a schedule at odds with the 9-to-5 workday. Sure, it’s fun and even emotionally healing, but it functions as school transport nonetheless. PPS just funded one Safe Routes to School coordinator, Shane Nevius, the only transportation support person for students walking or rolling 81 schools, in a system that seems to take the unacknowledged free labor of parents and teachers for granted.

“I love bike buses conceptually, but they aren’t as good a cultural fit with lower-income families as walking buses because of work and resource barriers.” —William Francis

Volunteerism to make up for funding deficiencies is strongest in schools like Creston, where parents have more flexibility, time, and bandwidth. Not every school has these volunteers, or if they do they might not all be as bike-ready. “I love bike buses conceptually, but they aren’t as good a cultural fit with lower-income families as walking buses because of work and resource barriers,” says William Francis, program director of the Community Cycling Center.

Others think that urban cycling requires more nuanced approaches. “It’s a lazy liberal white Portland thing to say bikes are for rich people,” says Jonathan Maus, editor and publisher of BikePortland, who has reported on bike buses for a decade. “There are tons of kids biking around parts of the city that are considered underserved. The popular narrative about equity in bicycling erases these riders and actually reinforces the inequity that we want to eradicate.”

At North Portland’s James John Elementary—a Title I school, meaning it serves many low-income families—organizers of the two bike buses and two walking buses held an end-of-year yard party in June. The kids received homemade participation awards, muffins, and juice. “Sustainability, community building, and joy are the main drivers for me,” said Jessica Fletcher, a mother and one of a cadre of energetic super-volunteers.

“You have to have a layered approach,” continued Fletcher, while arranging the food table, chatting with participants, and parenting. “We collaborate with a social worker, a PE instructor teaching kids to ride, and parent volunteers.” Last year, she and other volunteers created an Adopt-a-Bike program that distributed 59 bikes from Bikes for Humanity, and local nonprofit Washington County Bikes in partnership with national nonprofit Free Bikes for Kidz; the school social worker, who speaks Spanish, supported families who would benefit. The school also received a $5,000 Metro Regional Travel Options grant to buy bike locks and create a fix-it station. The same parents set up a monthly all-school Walk and Roll to School day, which includes bus drivers dropping kids within walking distance from school. “We are going to be a bike school,” says Fletcher.

Volunteers like Fletcher just might get paid in the future. This spring, advocates of bike buses flooded Salem to testify to the merits of riding and walking en groupe to support the Bike Bus Bill, introduced in February by Democrats Rep. Hoa Nguyen (Southeast Portland and Damascus), Rep. Khanh Pham (Southeast Portland), and Rep. Courtney Neron (Sherwood and Wilsonville). The school bus drivers’ union griped, portions were altered, and the bill passed in June, allowing individual districts to use up to 5 percent of their transportation grant on “alternative transportation,” defined as public transit, crossing guards, and walking-biking groups. The bill was signed into law in August.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Nguyen—an educator and walking bus organizer—notes that it achieved bipartisan support. “We found common ground,” she says. “Republicans like increasing local control with fiscal guardrails and expanding transportation options in rural areas, and I want to address chronic absenteeism and equitable access to safe alternative transportation.”

“When teacher volunteers crest the hill by our meeting spot, the kids light up and cheer. That’s been my favorite part.” —Abby Peterson

Renumeration would be great for Abby Peterson, the climate specialist (PPS-speak for a school culture specialist) at Sitton Elementary, another Title 1 school near James John. She runs the daily Stroll to Sitton, a walking bus that welcomes scooters, bikes, and wheelchairs. It starts at a housing development seven minutes from school, where she estimates that a third of Sitton students live. “When teacher volunteers crest the hill by our meeting spot, the kids light up and cheer. That’s been my favorite part,” she says, noting that the Stroll reduces chronic absenteeism and improves community-building. The kids try to “beat the bus to school” as they walk through Pier Park, which has struggled with ongoing safety issues.

The Stroll requires three teachers and two donated e-bikes. Ten teachers participate in rotation, with neither pay nor active participation from the administration. Peterson tapped into the Safe Routes to School program, a PBOT initiative that improves conditions for walking and biking around schools, which provided her student incentives: bandannas, comics, key chains, and stickers. “Thanks for the stickers,” says Peterson. “But I’d rather get paid.”

PRELAUNCH:Collaborate. Partner with parents, teachers, counselors, and principals, and connect with other bike bus organizers through BikeLoud PDX’s Bike Bus Slack channel.

Get schooled. The Eco-School Network’s Change Maker Course touches on resources available from Metro, PBOT, ODOT, and the Street Trust.

Get a map. To develop your route, request an anonymized map of student addresses from the school (not all schools will provide one). Keep the route short, a half mile to one and a half miles.

Make sure students have bikes. For ideas, contact PBOT Safe Routes to School or the PPS Safe Routes to School coordinator.

Spread the word. Post fliers, put notices in PTA communications and school bulletins, or “hang around the bike rack like a crazy stalker and talk with people,” jokes Essley.

BUS HABITS:Wear a helmet cam. People behave noticeably better when on camera. Also consider rearview mirror glasses.

Be consistent. Rain or shine, the bike bus happens.

Set the tone. Be welcoming and fun, rocking tunes along the route.

Stay together. Occupy the whole street with a “driver” in front, a “sweep” in back, and “corkers” (parents who block intersections with their bikes until the group passes).