All aboard! Edwardsville middle school students take the bike bus this fall

The City of Edwardsville and its public middle schools have experimented this fall with a new way to get students to and from class — a bike bus.

Students have brought their own bikes to ride single file to school on four consecutive Fridays, while adult bus “drivers” lead the pack and bring up the rear. The idea is to mimic a bus ride to school but on trails instead of the road.

“It’s really just introducing students to the possibility of the bicycle as a transportation device that’s also fun,” said Jason Stacy, a member of Edwardsville’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, who also led the bike bus to Liberty Middle School on the east side of town.

The buses have been more popular in the mornings than afternoons and gathered about 5-10 middle schoolers per ride, according to Stacy and fellow Southern Illinois University Edwardsville history professor, Jeff Manuel, who drives the other bike bus to Lincoln Middle School.

“Anytime we can get the kids not in a bus and not sitting in the car rider line that’s a success story, even if the numbers are relatively small,” Manuel said.

As a parent, Manuel said he appreciated skipping the long line of cars dropping off students early in the morning.

“If you replace that with a nice bicycle ride on a trail through the woods in the morning — which is, for me, I think a really fun and kind of delightful way to get to school or get to work — that’s just a win,” he said.

The move from Edwardsville is one avid bikers like Manuel and Stacy hope can inspire the next generation to embrace different modes of transportation, not only for recreation but for practical purposes.

“I think that people are starting to discover that, for short distances in crowded places, cars can actually be pretty inconvenient,” Stacy said. “You pay for gas, and sometimes they’re difficult to park.”

Even though it may be the first bike bus in the St. Louis area, Stacy said, by no means did he come up with the idea. He’d read about other successful ones in bigger cities across the country.

A Portland, Oregon, elementary school had 190 students ride in its bike bus just last year.

“Starting out small and building a movement can take time,” said Sam Balto, the elementary’s physical education teacher who led the bike bus.

Balto captured videos of his rides, which went viral on social media. The rides had so many kids that the group took the entire street.

“Starting a bike bus is a great way to build community,” Balto said. “It doesn’t have to be a huge group, like in my videos. It can just be a couple of families agreeing to meet at a certain spot and riding together. If you’re consistent, and you invite people to come, it will grow.”

As the Edwardsville group looks to add riders next spring, Stacy said it will expand the buses to upper elementary students, third through fifth graders, and to their schools.

“We think they’re going to be old enough to be pretty good riders,” Stacy said. “There might be a little more trepidation at that age about riding on their own. They may not know how to get there. Of course, we always invite parents to ride with us.”

For the students who’ve ridden this fall, they say they enjoy being with their friends while doing something fun — even if their parents lead it.

“The first week, I didn’t come because I thought it would be kind of weird with my dad,” said Nathalie Manuel, who’s in sixth grade. “But now I’m doing it, and it actually is pretty fun.”

She said the trip home on Friday is her favorite part because it’s a good way to start the weekend.

Fellow sixth grader Liam Catlin said the hill right before Lincoln Middle School can be tough to bike. “I can do it, but some people can’t,” he said.

Evan Becker, also a sixth grader, said that Jeff Manuel’s biking commands make him laugh.

After Evan, Liam and Nathalie locked up their bikes, they said that Friday morning’s ride went well — for the most part.

“We kept trying to pass each other,” Evan said with a smile. “It was kind of like a race at times.” Asked who the culprit was, Evan confessed. “It was me,” he said.

“Can’t forget about me,” Liam said.

Pointing to Nathalie, Evan said she was also to blame for the fun. “She’s the worst,” he joked.

Nathalie, of course, continued the blame chain and said her little brother was also responsible.