Walk/Bike to School Savings Calculator

How much will you save if you walk or bicycle to school every day of the year?

Walk & Bike to School logo
Walk & Bike to School logo
What if you walk or bike once a week or once a month?

International Walk to School Day is October 9th, 2013, and the month of October is Walk to School Month. Thousands of school kids across Missouri and across the world will be walking and biking to school that day.

Fill in your numbers below and find out how much you will save when you walk or bicycle to school:

BICYCLE SAVINGS CALCULATOR


Number of bicycle trips you will take in a school year:

Enter one-way trips--that is, 100 days biking to and from school makes 200 trips

Average/typical miles per trip (one way):


Average/typical speed (miles per hour):




RESULTS:

PEDESTRIAN SAVINGS CALCULATOR


Number of walking trips you will take in a school year:

Enter one-way trips--that is, 50 days walking to and from school makes 100 trips

Average/typical miles per trip (one way):


Average/typical speed (miles per hour):




RESULTS:

More Information [ close all ] [ open all ]

How you can use the calculator

Enter your own trips, miles, and speed to see how much you will save
Find how how much your whole family will save--enter the total trips and average trip length for everyone in your family
Figure out how much your whole class will save
Figure out how much your whole school will save
Figure out how much our entire state will save
Figure out how much our entire country will save!

Some facts and figures that will help you figure these numbers out

The average elementary school student walks about 2mph and bikes about 8-9mph.
The average middle schooler walks 3-4mph and bikes 10-12mph.
About half of school students ride a bus to school; the average distance from home to school for school bus students is about 5 miles.
Most of the other half of students live within walking distance and their average distance to school is between 3/4 mile and 1 1/4 mile.
The typical elementary school has 250-350 students and the typical middle school has 400-500 students.
There are about 916,000 students in Missouri schools, Pre-K through 12th grade.
There are about 55.4 million K-12 school students in the U.S.
There are 174 days in a school year (minimum, by Missouri state law), so if you walk or bicycle to and from school every single day that makes 348 trips.
To figure out the savings for your entire class, school, state, or country, you'll have to do some multiplication.

For instance, to figure out the savings for an entire school:
300 students * 50% in walking/biking distance * 174 days * 2 trips per day = 52200 trips in a year
Let's assume 90% walk and 10% bicycle. That is 46,980 trips by walking and 5,220 trips by bicycling
Average distance: 1 mile
Average speed of 2 mph walking or 8 mph bicycling
Put those numbers into the forms above and see what the answer is.
Add the bicycling and walking totals together to get the grand total. It's a lot!

How we calculate the savings

Fuel savings assume the average U.S. automobile/light truck mileage of 20.3 miles per gallon; adjust if your mileage is higher or lower.
Fuel and pollution calculations assume that a driver is making a round trip to pick up and drop off one child; adjust if you are carpooling with two or more students or not making a round trip.
"Other pollution" includes carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and volatile organic compounds, all of which contribute to smog and/or poor air quality; conversion rates are provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Your total benefit and savings include benefits to both you and your community: Savings in fuel, maintenance, and other consumable/per-mile automobile costs, congestion savings (up to 50% of traffic congestion at school start/end times is caused by trips to school), savings in the environmental cost of pollution and CO2 emission, health benefit to you of bicycling and/or walking to school, and enjoyment/recreational benefit of bicycling and/or walking to school. Explanation of the calculations, the numbers, and research backing them is available in an Excel file.

Credits

Nicole Albright: Web programming
Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation/Missouri Safe Routes to School Network (mobikefed.org): Research, calculation formulas, web programming

Photo credits

Charcoal pile: Carlos Fernandez/FlickR. License: CC BY-NC 2.0
Slimy glob: Angie Shyrigh/Flickr. License: CC BY-NC 2.0
Money: Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation. License: CC BY 2.0.
WTSD and SRTS logos: National Center for Safe Routes to School
Gas can: Clipart Graphics/Public domain
"Hike it, Bike it, I like it" logo: WalkToSchool.org.

Installing the calculator on your own web site

You may install the bike/ped calculator on your own web site and modify/adapt it for your own use, as long as you include the created by, credits, and photo credits sections above. Note that some of the photos & graphics are restricted to non-commercial use only. Download .zip file

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The Missouri Safe Routes to School Network thanks these generous funders:

Funding for this project was provided in part by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Funding for this project was provided in part by The Missouri Foundation for Health. The Missouri Foundation for Health is a philanthropic organization whose vision is to improve the health of the people in the communities it serves.
Funding for this project was provided in part by the Incarnate Word Foundation.
Funding for this project was provided in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Region VII Office of Minority Health.
Funding for this project was provided in part by Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Kansas City
Funding for this project was provided in part by the Daughters of Charity Foundation of St. Louis
Funding for this project was provided in part by the Lutheran Foundation of St. Louis
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