Instead of driving to school, more kids are taking the ‘bike bus’

It might’ve looked like a bike parade at first glance.

It was Friday morning in Ravenswood. A couple dozen children and parents were on bicycles. As they rode through the neighborhood, more kids and parents joined.

“Big crowd today,” one neighbor told the group. She stood in her front yard, waving and photographing the group of cyclists. Parents and kids yelled back, “Good morning!”

But it wasn’t a parade.

They called it a bike bus — the latest way grade schoolers are getting to class.

In this case, it was a weekly group ride to Waters Elementary School, 4540 N. Campbell Ave. The group had grown to 100 cyclists by the time they arrived at school just before the 8 a.m. bell.

Bike buses have grown in popularity since they first appeared in Chicago about four years ago. More than a couple dozen bike buses are now held regularly in the Chicago area.

The idea behind the bike bus is simple: Once a week, a group of kids and parents bike to school together. Parents typically organize the bike bus and ride as chaperones, blocking drivers at intersections as the group passes. The route is shared in advance. People wait and join along the way.

“As we ride to school, we get bigger and bigger,” Rebecca Resman, a parent who leads a bike bus, told the Sun-Times. “Then we arrive: smiles, joy, all ready to learn.”

Resman, 44, started one of the city’s first bike buses in 2022 at Hamilton Elementary in Lake View for her two children. She tracks bike buses through her group Chicago Family Biking, and estimates there are 30 now operating in the Chicago area.

People ride for a few reasons. A bike bus provides safety in numbers for parents wary of letting their child bike alone to school. Some people join to socialize. And then there’s the excitement.

“It’s a roving party through the neighborhood,” Resman said.

Most bike buses convene once a week. Many pause over the winter. Resman’s bike bus typically cancels for bad weather.

The bike bus concept can be traced to Belgium in 1998. But it became popular just as the world emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some Chicago bike bus organizers say they were inspired by Sam Balto, who reportedly organized the first U.S. bike bus in 2022 in Portland, Oregon. Balto has said he was inspired by video of a “bicibús” in Barcelona, Spain, the year prior.

Sten Turpin, 46, said he was inspired by Balto’s videos to organize the first bike bus to Waters Elementary in 2023.

The ride was not an immediate success. For the first couple rides, Turpin, his wife and two children, Felix and Tycho, were the only attendees. More people joined when he settled on the current 2.5-mile route that circles the school.

“Now we can easily get above 100 riders,” Turpin said.

The point of the bike bus is to encourage and teach kids to ride to school safely, he said.

“A lot of it has to do with independence and being comfortable riding in the street. It’s a low barrier to entry way for kids to start getting that experience,” he said.

Many bike buses are for neighborhood schools, where most students live nearby.

That’s not the case for Walt Disney Magnet School, in Uptown, where Brad Fisher has been hosting bike buses since 2022. Fisher is the school’s technology coordinator. He has seen ridership grow from less than 10 to upwards of 30.

At Disney, “kids can come from all over the city. So it’s been a challenge to build up. We’re starting to see some momentum,” Fisher said.

Bike buses are also about pushing back against the city’s car-centric culture.

Resman pointed out that fewer kids are getting to school on their own.

In 1969, nearly 50% of children either walked or biked to grade school, according to a national survey. By 2017, the number dropped to 11%. Meanwhile, the number of kids driven to school rose from 12% to 50%.

The bike bus “seems so radical,” she said. “But it’s ordinary that these kids are biking to school.”

She aims to normalize biking.

“My goal is that we don’t need bike buses,” she said.

But as long as Chicago’s streets are considered dangerous for cyclists and children, parents may have to stick with the safety of the bike bus.

“I taught my kids to ride a bike [early] and I still get extremely nervous when they go out on their own,” Turpin said. “I don’t trust drivers. Cars are bigger than they ever been. It’s extremely concerning. A lot of it is, we’re a big group. We’re visible. We’re keeping each other safe.”