How to start a Walking School Bus program

Ian Thomas of the PedNet Coalition was recently interviewed by the Project for Public Spaces about what it takes to get a community Walking School Bus program going and how PedNet did it in Columbia: 

Ian Thomas

If you design a program so parents have faith in it, it is well run, and volunteers are trained, responsible, and reliable, then parents are extremely happy that their kids are walking to school because they get out and get exercise in the morning and in the afternoon. It’s more like when the parents were in school. My generation was among that 50% walking to school so it’s sort of a throwback. We developed our program in Columbia by recruiting adults, many of them college students. We designed the routes, advertised the program, got parents to sign their kids up, and took the volunteers through the walking routes to survey them. It’s become very popular in Columbia. Last school year we had about 500 kids participate.

Read the rest of the interview here.