« BICYCLE EDUCATION
Safe Routes to School in Maryland During the final quarter of 2010, WABA continued the Maryland Safe Routes to School program, providing bikes, helmets, and curricula to trained teachers throughout Prince George’s, Baltimore, and Harford Counties as well as in Baltimore City to serve over 1270 elementary and middle school students in the region. The lessons emphasized the most commonly-needed skills as children develop from riding their bikes in their own driveways into using them to get where they need to go, especially to school.
important of all, stopping at a stop sign and walking the bike across a crosswalk.
The proper use of bike helmets is emphasized and students are taught the steps to a good helmet fit. The rules of the road and how to dress for safety and comfort come next. How to tell whether the bike is safe to ride is followed by an on-bike course incorporating different elements of bike control: safely starting up, avoiding obstacles, riding predictably in a straight line, and most
2. Reducing traffic congestion around schools resulting from parents driving students to schools that are close enough for the students to reach by walking and bicycling.
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Now in its seventh year, this program is aimed at all elementary and middle school students with goals including: 1. Improving students’ academic performance by encouraging them to walk and bike to school, thus arriving alert and exercised.
3. Reducing disease caused by air pollution and inactivity such as asthma, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
4. Encouraging school communities to analyze factors which contribute to improved community planning, especially infrastructure around schools such as sidewalks and crosswalks, and siting of future schools. Safe Routes to School programming is administered by the Maryland Highway Safety Office. Funding passed to the state from the Federal Transportation Bill is available for eligible schools throughout the state. Parents or school staff are encouraged to apply for this funding by contacting Joe Pelaia, Maryland Highway Safety Office, jpelaia@sha.state.md.us.
WABA Bicycle Education 2010 Year in Review 2010 was the busiest year in WABA’s bicycle education program history both in variety of classes offered and number of bicyclists served. While youth education showed consistent growth, the realm of adult education really set new records.
Youth Education
DC
Overall from ’04-’10 WABA has served over 22,000 youth in the District of Columbia. The number of children served has doubled each year until 2008 when we reached current staff capacity at just over 5,000 youth per year, with steady growth of 250 additional served each year after 2008. WABA continues to serve as the main provider of education and encouragement activities for the District Department of Transportation’s (DDOT) Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program and served 10 schools (DCPS, Public Charter and private) with direct delivery (by WABA staff), in-class pedestrian and bicycle lessons, in addition to providing 13 bicycle rodeos. Some of our partners this year were ACHIEVE Kids Tri program, DC’s Commander Ready program and the NBC4 Health and Fitness Expo. Looking ahead, WABA hopes to continue providing educational services for DDOT’s SRTS program in addition to fee for service events for other local partners. To find out how your local school can participate in DDOT’s SRTS program, browse this website: http://www.bikemap.com/ dcsaferoutes.
MD
WABA’s Maryland State Highway Administration Safety Office youth education program is a Train-the-Trainer model and continues to successfully cover a large area that includes Prince George’s, Montgomery, Harford, Baltimore County and Baltimore City. To date, this program has served over 62,000 youth from ’04-’10. In 2010, we trained 25 new instructors, serving 28 schools and over 7,800 students. These numbers are a decrease from the average 9,000 served per year, but this is due mainly to a reduced scope of work for 2010-2011. Please see related article above. In addition, WABA provided direct delivery, in-class lessons for Takoma Park’s SRTS program in 6 schools and over 550 students. Next year Takoma Park will switch over to a Train-the-Trainer model.
VA Peter M. Baskin
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR AT LAW 2300 CLARENDON BLVD, SUITE 700 ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA 22201 TEL: (703) 528-8000 • (703) 276-6800 FAX: (703 ) 522-4570 Representing Injured Cyclists Since 1972
4 RIDEON • Spring, 2011
WABA assisted Trails for Youth by providing 2 bicycle rodeos for 2 Alexandria schools last year, serving 70 youth and their parents who expressed a growing interest in biking to school with their children. In the future WABA hopes to expand youth bicycle education into Arlington and Fairfax County through Virginia’s SRTS program.
Excited new cyclists in Alexandria at one of the six Learn to Ride classes in June 2010
long-time commuter. During a typical year we reach an average of 350 cyclists, but in 2010 we served over 1,000. We provided approximately 1,750 printed materials in Spanish and directly taught 100 Spanish speakers. In addition to our Traffic Skills classes held throughout the region (WABA calls them Confident City Cycling or CCC), funded by DDOT’s Bicycle Program, Bike Arlington and the City of Alexandria Bicycle Program, we were able to offer six of the very popular first time adult rider (Learn to Ride) classes in the District, Arlington and Alexandria. The classes were also subsidized with free bike rentals from Bike and Roll’s Bike the Sites and Revolution Cycle’s City Hub. WABA also expanded adult education opportunities into Rockville, MD thanks to their Department of Recreation. In 2010, WABA’s Brown Bag Commuter Seminars reached nearly 500 employees from various private businesses, non-profits and government departments. These seminars allow organizations to have a WABA instructor give a presentation, bring in maps and guides and answer questions from their employees. In 2010 we offered our first-ever League Cycling Instructor (LCI) class taught by WABA staff, where we certified 14 new instructors from throughout the MidAtlantic States. As a spin off from all of these adult education opportunities, WABA has gathered a core LCI network of 20 dedicated and qualified cycling instructors in the Greater Washington area. The call for educating motorists was also answered by WABA teaching 450 DCPS bus operators and 50 Arlington County employees how to safely share the road with cyclists.
Adult Education
WABA’s Bicycle Ambassador Program, now in its third year, is comprised of our full-time Ambassador coordinator and a dedicated team of volunteer Ambassadors. They have brought bicycle specific messaging city-wide at events and disseminated information to an estimated 48,000 people.
WABA’s adult education program has served over 2,700 cyclists in DC, MD and VA since its inception in 2004. WABA uses the national bicycling curriculum from the League of American Bicyclists and offers certification for all levels of riding from the recreational beginning to the
To sum up, if we collect together all of the bicyclists served through quality, direct, in-person bicycle education we are nearing 90,000 served-- which means that 2011 will be the year that WABA makes the mark of taking our education mission to 100,000 cyclists!