Pedal power in a class of its own for school time
With school starting, it’s time for parents and kids to get organised — and the Herald is here to help. Today, Melissa Nightingale looks at transport
With a set of sparkly shoes for 6-year-old Zoe, some sharkpatterned sunglasses for 3-year-old Beau and the Barbie soundtrack queued on the Bluetooth speaker, the Russells are ready to head out on their family bike to school.
Lower Hutt dad Richie Russell has been doing this for years now, skipping the school bus run or rush-hour traffic in favour of riding his electric bike to school with his two kids on the back.
“It takes so little time to just get down there, get them off the bike and get them into the classroom,” he said.
Being on a bike means Russell can avoid the mad parking rush outside the school and drop his daughter right at her classroom door before heading to the neighbouring kindergarten to drop off Beau. The morning trip takes only two minutes and is unaffected by congestion.
Wife Jess Russell said when she took the kids in the car, parking was “horrible” and borderline dangerous.
“People get all flustered and want to try to find the best park, and all speed, and it’s like, you can tell everyone’s on edge,” she said.
Russell said he has been cycling his daughter to school for years and had recently invested in a cargo e-bike as the best way to drop off both children.
The bike cost $8000, which he acknowledged was a similar cost to buying a car, but noted that in some ways he uses the bike in place of a car to transport his family around, and also to cycle 50
minutes into work in Wellington.
He believes the Government should introduce subsidies or rebates to encourage people to buy e-bikes, which would help take cars off the roads.
Government figures show more than 800,000 students were enrolled in schools in 2023, and Census data from 2018 shows most students go to school as passengers in a car, truck or van.
The data, compiled by Figure NZ, showed more than 63 per cent of 5-to-9-year-olds are driven to school, with 22 per cent going by foot, 8.5 per cent by school bus and 3.4 per cent by bike.
For 10-14 year olds, about 40 per cent were driven to school, and students were more likely to walk, jog, bus or bike to school than those in the younger age group.
Some also catch a public bus, train, ferry, or study at home.
The Ministry of Education does not collect data on how many students are driven to school in private cars.
Many students take buses contracted by the Ministry of Education,
and others used standard urban buses, according to councils.
Late last year, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown floated the idea that some of the city’s motorists could soon be charged $5 per trip on some of its busiest highways.
Brown said he was looking at placing said congestion charges on SH1 between the Penrose and Greenlane on-ramps, and SH16 between the Lincoln Rd and Te Atatu¯ on-ramps.
“Between 7am and 9am, those two motorways jam up, and between 4.30pm and 6.30pm, they jam up again,” Brown said.
He claimed travelling at peak times was “easily avoidable”.
When asked by Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan about parents dropping off children to school, which would fall in the peak morning hours, Brown said when he was a youngster, “you got to school on your own”.
“It isn’t the law [that] you have to get to school in a BMW,” he said.
Cycling Advocates’ Network (Can) spokesman Patrick Morgan has previously pushed for parents
to look into getting their kids cycling to school.
“It’s absolutely possible because we’ve been there before, as recently as the 70s and 80s,” he said.
“Masses of school-aged children got around their neighbourhoods by bike.”
Data from the Auckland Regional Authority 1980 showed about 20 per cent of intermediate students cycled to school back then.
He said parents could ride with their children until they were confident and added there were multiple things to teach kids to help them have a safer commute.
Morgan, a Pedal Ready instructor who goes into schools to teach bike skills, said their main message was “see, be seen, communicate”.
They teach riders to do regular head checks, ride in a position where drivers would see them and to avoid the gutter, the “door zone” near parked cars, and take the lane when needed.
“Communicate” refers to using hand signals to let drivers know where they are heading.