Students Take "Walking Bus" to School
Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:43 AM
In Italy, students take a "walking bus" to school.
The bus doesn't actually have an engine or tires - it's a bus made of students who walk to school in a piedibus, which literally translates as "foot-bus" in Italian, reports the NYT.
Here's how it works. Lines of students walk along the streets of Lecco, Italy, while paid staffers and parent volunteers in florescent yellow vests guide them in a modern-day Pied Piper scene. It's a bus route with a driver but no vehicle.
About 450 children travel along 17 bus routes to elementary schools - using their feet. Routes are usually less than a mile long in this city located at the southern tip of Lake Como.
The walking bus idea cropped up in 2003 to combat three major issues: the growing problem of childhood obesity; local traffic jams; and an increase in global greenhouse gases.
Only 13 percent of kids here in the States walk to school, compared to 40 percent in 1969, according to the federal government's National Household Travel Survey.
Other towns in Britain and France have also created "walking buses" for kids, although those are not as extensive as Lecco's. Closer to home, Columbia, Mo., Marin County, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. launched smaller walking-bus programs. They were part of the Safe Routes to School, a national program which gives states money to encourage students to walk or ride bikes.
What do you think? Would a program like this work in Houston?