Bike to School Week GTHA Experience

23 Jul 2016, Posted by David Laing in Brampton Cycling, Brampton Kids on Bikes, Events-GTA Cycling, Ontario Cycling, Region of Peel Cycling

Hundreds of schools from across Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area participated in Bike to School week organized by Events Subcommittee of Active and Sustainable School Transportation (ASST) Regional Hub of Metrolinx. The subcommittee is comprised of staff from Metrolinx and its program Smart Commute, school boards, Public Health units, municipal Transportation Services departments, and non-governmental organizations. CultureLink, an NGO involved with providing cycling programming to schools, is contracted to support work of the subcommittee. The campaign is affiliated with Bike Month, which is coordinated by Cycle Toronto.

Six Municipal Regions are represented on the HUB including: Hamilton, Halton, Peel, Toronto, York, and Durham.

For signing up on the Bike Month web-site, schools received information and incentives for organizing events to encourage students of all ages to ride their bikes to and from school, not just during this special week, but throughout the school year.

Many of the schools ran contests or other events during each day of bike to school week

Cycling safety was a focus for this year’s events. Thanks to a generous grant from Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s Community Partnership Program, many schools across the area were provided with cycling safety prizes including helmets, bells and Bike Booster safety information cards.

BikeBrampton , with help from the ASST Hub, submitted and administered the grant and the safety gear was distributed to the schools by Hub members in each of the Regions.

This year’s Bike To School Week saw a significant increase in the number of schools participating as well as the number of kids participating at each school.

The graph below, produced by the mother of a student at RJ Lee Public School is representative of the type of growth seen at many of the participating schools.