Safe Routes to El Cerrito Schools: Let’s make it easy for kids to get to school the smart and healthy way



By Stuart Sonatina

El Cerrito has about 25,000 people, 4,500 of whom are under 18. Every weekday they get up and go to one of our approximately 15 schools, which in our city of 3.67 square miles is typically less than a mile away. That’s less than a 20-minute walk or a 4- to 8-minute bike ride. Instead of benefitting from those few minutes of fresh air and exercise, many children are immobile in a car seat for their twice-daily commute. It’s hard to blame their parents for choosing to drive their children to school instead of letting them walk or bike; after all, over 110 Americans are killed by a car every day.

There are numerous benefits (both short and long term) to walking or biking to school. These include improvements to mental and physical health, better sleep, and increased performance in school, to name a few. Unfortunately, the United States has seen fewer and fewer students getting to school under their own power over the past several decades. This creates a vicious cycle where since fewer people walk and bike, less attention is spent on creating infrastructure for families outside of cars, thereby perpetuating the problem. 

It’s time we shift our focus to solving the bigger, longer-term issue. Let’s make it easier for parents to make the right decision when taking their kids to school. Let’s enable people to opt for biking or walking to their nearby destinations. Let’s help the residents of El Cerrito lead a healthier lifestyle by putting cars back in their place.

What does that mean? It means protected bike lanes in places other than the Ohlone Greenway. It means more traffic-calming measures like making traffic lanes narrower and adding chicanes, bump-outs, and speed tables. It means bike boulevards and protected bike lanes with car-diverting features such as bollards or lane dividers. It means making people feel safe enough to choose to walk and bike instead of driving, and, crucially, allowing their children to do the same. Here in El Cerrito, we can begin by creating a network of protected bike lanes that connect homes and schools. That could mean protected bike lanes on Ashbury, Fairmount, Eureka, Gladys, Hill, Cutting, Arlington, Potrero, or any number of other streets that have little-to-no bike infrastructure, but plenty of free street parking.

“Despite conventional logic, the evidence continues to build that high bicycling places are not only safer for bicyclists but for all road users.” (Marshall and Ferenchak, 2019) Indeed, at the highest level of bike infrastructure buildout, about 2 miles of protected bike lanes per square mile, we can expect a 50% decrease in the fatal and severe injury crash rate over the average. This means about 7 miles of protected bike lanes in El Cerrito. To put that number in perspective, El Cerrito paved 26.7 miles of streets in a single year. Building protected bike lanes effectively creates safer streets for all road users.

We have the power to make a change that will have a real effect on whether people choose to walk, bike, or drive: the way we design the layout of our city. Let’s build a city where kids—and their parents—feel comfortable and safe walking or biking wherever they need to go. We’ll all thank ourselves later.

ACTIONS:

  • If you’re interested in participating in a Safe Routes to School working group for El Cerrito and Richmond Annex, write to Stuart Sonatina at stu@pleaserideyour.bike
  • Let the EC City Council know the public demands safe streets! Submit a public comment by emailing cityclerk@ci.el-cerrito.ca.us (Subject: public comments – not on the agenda).
  • Come by EC city hall in person during our council meetings every 1st and 3rd Tuesday to let the council know we need these changes. You don’t need to submit anything prior to the meeting; just show up, write your name on a card, and you get 3 minutes to speak to the council!
  • Get informed: check out some ways to make our city great for biking, then use your new knowledge to request a specific project for the city council to approve. They won’t do it if we don’t ask!
  • Put your ideas for improvements on the interactive map developed by the Contra Costa Transportation Authority


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