On the road! Parents and children ride to school together with the 'bikebus' initiative in Barcelona

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Children and adults biked together through the streets of Barcelona on Friday on their way to school, thanks to the ‘bikebus’ initiative taking the school run by storm.

This initiative consists of organising parents and students to go to school at the same time by bicycle, occupying the road like a convoy so that children who are just starting to learn to cycle can feel safer.

“The organisation has a Telegram channel where we have all the interested people who want to join the initiative. So what we do is send information about the route, or about when we are departing, or following the route live, and people join at different stops that we have, as if it was a bus line,” explained participant Rosa Surinyac.

The Barcelona Urban Guard escorts cyclists through the streets until they arrive at school. In this way, participants can circulate around the city safely and in a sustainable way, and the little ones learn road safety education.

SOUNDBITES:

SOT, Rosa Surinyac, Family Association of the Entenca school member (Spanish): “The idea arose because we were inspired by other organisations that began to carry out these initiatives in other nearby cities in Catalonia, but the concept of the ‘bikebus’ was already functioning in other cities around the world. The particular thing is that there are different formats of ‘bikebus’. The format that we chose for Barcelona, taking into account the traffic that exists here in the Eixample [district] is a concept of ‘bikebus’ in a big way, what we call a ‘bicicletada.’”

SOT, Rosa Surinyac, Family Association of the Entenca school member (Spanish): “The organisation has a Telegram channel where we have all the interested people who want to join the initiative. So what we do is send information about the route, or about when we are departing, or following the route live, and people join at different stops that we have, as if it was a bus line, or they simply see us, they go with their bicycle and join us.”

SOT, Genis Dominguez, Family Association of the Entença school member (Catalan): “We see that the children are the ones who are most encouraged to participate in the ‘bikebus.’ We have many children who see it and are the ones who ask their parents to buy them a bicycle, or to join the ‘bikebus,’ to go to school by bike, to participate in the ‘bikebus.’ They are the main promoters of the ‘bikebus,’ and they are the ones who are making this change.”

SOT, Alfonso, ‘Bikebus’ promoter (Spanish): “We have no problem with the school, they have always supported us, and luckily they also supported us from the neighbourhood district, the town hall, and the Urban Guard. The Urban Guard escorts us every Friday, and they will do it until December at least, so that allows us to mobilise more people and attract more attention. When Urban Guard stops escorting us, well, we will see how it can be done, because it is quite difficult to manage 60 or 100 people. We’ll see.”

SOT, Genis Dominguez, Family Association of the Entenca school member (Catalan): “The claim we have at the ‘bikebus’ is that the cycling infrastructure in Barcelona has to be suitable for children. Right now there is a lot of infrastructure for bicycles, especially in Eixample, there are many lanes for bicycles, but they have specifications that are not safe for children who are just starting with a bicycle. Therefore, one of our demands is to build an infrastructure that allows us to do what we do safely, using bike lanes, not using car lanes.”

#Bikebus #Barcelona

Video ID: 20211022-030

Video on Demand: https://ruptly.tv/videos/20211022-030
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