Decatur Bike Bus Idea Selected as Finalist for $1 Million Challenge
Decatur Metro | July 19, 2016 | 10:09 am
Asst. Director of Decatur Active Living Cheryl Burnette sends along this cool announcement…
The City of Decatur was selected as a finalist in the Play Everywhere Challenge, a $1 million national competition that will award outside-the-box ideas to make play easy, available, and fun for kids and families in cities across the U.S. The Challenge is hosted by KaBOOM!, a national non-profit dedicated to bringing balanced and active play into the daily lives of all children, particularly those growing up in poverty in America.
The City of Decatur created an innovative plan for a Pedal to School Bike Bus and a renewal of the bus stop on Trinity Place into a play space. The project was selected as a finalist out of a pool of more than 1,000 applications nationwide. Winners will be announced in early fall, 2016.
The Challenge, developed in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Target, Playworld, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts, attracted an outpouring of creative ideas to spark kids’ imaginations and get their bodies moving. Decatur’s idea came from a passion for getting kids more involved in Safe Routes to School.
“The Pedal to School Bike Bus is currently being used in Holland and is a great way for children to travel to school while getting exercise along the way. Riding a bike brings joy and good health, and the bike bus is particularly whimsical,” said Danielle Suchdev, member of the Pedestrian Advisory Committee. “The bus will enable 11 children to bike themselves to school, departing from the Decatur Housing Authority.
“We were astonished at the number and quality of the applications we received,” said James Siegal, CEO of KaBOOM!. “To us, it shows a huge, untapped potential to reimagine cities with kids in mind, and boost their opportunity to get the play they need to thrive. And when kids thrive, cities thrive.”
Kids need play to grow up healthy, resilient and ready for life. Research shows play is vital to healthy brain development and is pivotal to how kids learn problem-solving, conflict resolution and creativity–in other words, the skills they need to succeed as adults. Yet today, too many kids, especially those growing up in poverty, are missing out on play because of families’ time pressures, the lure of screens, and a lack of safe places to go. Meanwhile, evidence shows missing out on the chance to play puts kids at risk for challenges ranging from obesity to anxiety to trouble adjusting in school.
“We’re thrilled at the possibility that Decatur’s kids could win this fantastic new opportunity to learn and develop from play,” said Cheryl Burnette of Decatur Active Living. “If we’re selected as a winner, we hope it will be just the beginning of a larger effort to make play a way of life for kids and families in our community and to have a way for more children to experience biking to school.”
Winners for the competition will be selected in fall 2016. To learn more about Decatur’sideas for making play happen everywhere in the city, contact Cheryl Burnette. To learn more about the Play Everywhere Challenge, including a gallery of ideas for what Play Everywhere could look like across the U.S. please visit http://kaboom.org/playeverywhere
Looks like good fun and exercise. But they should wear helmets when out on the actual road, right?
The grant request includes line items for helmets and safety vests. We also propose to have the children attend bike safety training.
Sounds great right up until you’re pedaling to school on Aug. 1st.
“a $1 million national competition that will award outside-the-box ideas to make play easy, available, and fun for kids and families”
Hey kids, want to have some “easy, available” fun? Great! Just hop on this bike bus with us . . . but not before you don full safety gear and take a mandatory training class.
Perhaps it is an obsessive, zero-risk culture that plays a large role in making it more difficult for kids to go out and play.
Bike helmets are ubiquitous, extremely lightweight, and pretty cool looking these days. Kids have been seeing them on super fit, intense, fast cyclists around town so they aspire to wearing them. Plus it’s the law. Plus you only get one brain and no one has come up with brain transplants yet. Not to mention the cost to the taxpayer of caring for a brain injury for a lifetime.
Yes, but when you obsess over the helmet, you take the fun out of it. I mean, sure, put a helmet on. But let’s make fun the priority. It’s kind of like instead of celebrating that Comet saved our bowling alley, someone whines that the lane benches look uncomfortable. These are related points in that both are sucking the fun right out of it, when fun is the whole point.
Hardly.
I’m remembering the six out of 200 kids in my graduating high school class (1984) who died in car accidents prior to seat belt law enforcement, the two cheerleaders whose faces were disfigured in a similar manner, and the one kid who had multiple head surgeries after a bike accident and never was quite right afterwards.
go full banana on the design and give it a name, and you’ll improve your chances for winning.
Actually, “Full Bike Banana” kind of fits!
or The Banana Bike Bus . . .
lots of fun options
Banana shaped bright yellow helmets for the win!
Bring back banana seats.
So what you’re saying is they need to add a peel.
This is great! I hope it wins! I know my kids would love it. Has there been any discussion about how to be inclusive of kids with disabilities who may not be able to pedal? It may not be possible to accommodate everyone in this model, but you know the question will be asked. Is that something the city is prepared to address?
Good question. If you look closely, there’s a row in front that doesn’t require pedaling and can seat up to 3 kids, depending on their size I suppose. But if the child uses a wheelchair, I’m not sure how that would get transported.
I bet there’s a way to affix a rack of some kind to the front or back of the “bus” similar to the bike racks on the Marta buses so that wheelchairs, walkers and other items could be transported with the children.