IF YOU'VE EVER driven through Montclair, New Jersey, on a nice (or even not-so-nice) Friday morning during the school year, you’d be forgiven if your overriding thought was: That’s a lot of bikes. In fact, kids — and some of their parents — biking to school might represent the largest number of people moving through Montclair at that time.

“Imagine if 500 people in town were all in separate vehicles. It would cause the worst traffic jam,” says Montclair resident Jessica Tillyer, co-founder of Montclair Bike Bus. Instead, yes, you may have to wait as a helmeted, high-visibility-vested parent “corks” an intersection while two dozen kids cross, but all those bikes represent cars that are not cluttering up the road and belching exhaust.

It’s called a bike bus, and it’s a way to encourage kids to get pedaling for health and fitness. Riding with a group of other kids and adults helps mitigate parents’ safety concerns.

These largely grassroots programs are popping up across the country and the world.

What a Bike Bus is -- and Isn't

Though the benefits of more movement are clear —heart health, brain health, bone health, and more— fewer American children than ever walk or bike to school: 13% in 2001, down from 41% in 1969, according to a 2007 study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. More than two decades on and that number has only shrunk. According to a 2020 study in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports, as of 2017 only about 1 in 10 American kids walk or bike to school despite programs such as Safe Routes to School (SRTS) and Active Transportation to School (ATS).

Bike buses are a way to get more kids active but they’re not a definitive answer to the common problem of getting kids to and from school. Instead, says John MacArthur, Sustainable Transportation Program Manager at Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), “Think of it as an arrow in the quiver of ATS.”

In some areas, the bike bus operates like a school bus, picking up kids at “stops” along a predetermined route. Others are more like group rides, with all the riders meeting at a central location and proceeding to schools. The bike bus for Horace Mann Elementary School in Melrose, Massachusetts, led by Colleen Conway and her husband, serves one school. Others, like the Montclair bike bus, have 10 or more routes. The Portland, Oregon bike buses have nearly two dozen routes.

What a bike bus isn’t: Replacement for other methods of getting kids to school. Most bike buses, including Montclair, run no more frequently than once a week (Conway’s runs twice a month). They don’t typically run after school either, thanks to much more heterogeneous schedules, leaving parents to coordinate getting their kids home. Some parents meet their kids by bike or on foot while some pick them up by car and put the bike in the trunk or truck bed. Others might let their kids ride home solo.

“I feel a bike bus is equal parts transportation and ‘vibes,’” says Tillyer. “We’re selling the idea of, ‘Be part of this community, envision a new future for our town.’”

Bike Buses by the Numbers

MacArthur is one of the authors of a TREC report titled, “Exploring Bike Buses in the United States,” published in 2024. It chronicled 96 bike buses in the United States and included two online surveys and 10 video interviews with parent and student participants.

According to the report, the average bike bus has 19 students and 11 parents. Most serve first- through sixth-graders. The bike bus movement is solidly grassroots and bottom-up. While 90% of respondents say they get a bit of promotion from their PTA or school newsletters, only a quarter get any kind of funding.

“We’ve had great support from our school and our superintendent,” says Conway, adding that both the principal and superintendent have ridden with the bike bus. “Our principal and our PTO were on board from the beginning. But they don’t have any role in it. I think when school staff are organizing a bike bus is when school districts give more pushback because of liability issues.”

Where Can You Find Bike Buses?

“Bike buses pop up all over the place,” says MacArthur. “Certainly, in places like Portland and traditional biking cities and places that would be supportive of active transportation, but they’re also happening in suburban and small towns around the country. It shows that this [bike buses] is applicable in a lot of different places.”

Bike buses are a worldwide phenomenon. Bikebus.world has an interactive map of bike buses from Australia to India and from Mexico to Canada. According to the map, the northernmost bike bus in the Western Hemisphere is in Camrose, Alberta, Canada, about an hour south of Edmonton, serving St. Patrick's Catholic School.

"It's right on the prairie and pretty quiet," says co-founder Heidi Bergstrom of the town of Camrose, where the average daily temperature between November and February doesn't eclipse 32 degrees Fahrenheit, helping to contribute to an average snowfall of more than 2 feet during that time. "There's not a lot of biking here. We're definitely an anomaly when we're going down the road with our little crew."

Are bike buses sustainable? A literature review in the TREC report notes that relying on volunteers to keep a bike bus going is a fast track to failure. However, more than four out of five survey respondent organizers — 85% — were parents of current students volunteering their time and effort. The same percentage said they worry about the bike bus continuing after their children have left the school.

Safety is another primary concern among parents and organizers. Montclair’s main drag, Bloomfield Avenue, is an artery cutting through the heart of Essex County.

With about 6,800 people per square mile versus the national average of less than 100, Essex County is one of the most densely populated areas in the most densely populated state in the union. Think high volume traffic, cars parked on both sides, lights flashing, horns blaring—a busy city block, and pretty dicey on a bike.

Bike bus organizers accounted for this in their route planning and by educating students and parent volunteers about the rules of the road. Tillyer went one step further and joined the town’s Vision Zero Task Force. The task force successfully lobbied for a new, lower speed limit — 25 MPH — throughout town, and 20 MPH in school zones. “There’s been some real changes because our bike bus community has contacted their government leaders and asked for these changes,” she said.

Sustaining and Encouraging Bike Buses

Bike-friendly infrastructure and culture can help, but sometimes a bike bus can be a first step to a wider change. Bergstrom said that despite the lack of bike lanes, the winter dark, infrequent plowing on potential routes, and overall indifferent — possibly frosty — attitude toward biking, there was a hunger for something like a bike bus in Camrose.

“It’s surprising how much people love it, especially in rural Alberta where biking isn’t a huge thing,” she says. “We have families from out in the country who drive in and drop their kids off on our route because the kids just like being part of it so much.”

Bike buses need visibility and enthusiasm to survive and thrive. They need momentum, and it can’t come only from students and parents. Organizers the world over have a message for local government officials and transportation planners: Come take a ride.

“If they just come with us, they’ll love it,” says Bergstrom. “And they’ll see how important it is to make it safe for kids to bike.”

Patrick Sullivan is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.