Skip to main content

Kids on Bikes: Bicibus in Barcelona's Eixample

             Photo credit: Patricia Alvarez @patalgar 

The image of kids riding their bike to school in a big city is highly inspiring. Kids on bikes. Together in a group, going to school. Pedalling together along city streets, each on their own, yet together in unison.  Yesterday we saw images of the first Bicibus in the Eixample grid of Barcelona (see here or here).  You can think of BiciBus as a sort of critical mass for kids going to school. This was not the first Bicibus in Barcelona, that honor goes to the group in Sarrià, and yet the first group in the Eixample somehow feels like a turning point. If we can insert kids on bikes here, we can do it anywhere. 

@BicibusEixmaple is an experiment that we should all be watching closely. Until recently, most #BiciBus projects have been in smaller towns, with bikable streets and distances that are amenable to cycling school commutes for kids and parents. In the suburbs, one can imagine asking kids to bike to school together in a group to increase safety and convenience of the parents who need to drive in another direction. 

But can the BiciBus model be successfully adopted in a city? On streets with so many vehicles? What are the special considerations and needs of a BiciBus project in a highly dense and urban environment? Is the temporary conquest of city streets by kids riding their bike to school a merely symbolic and temporary victory? Might it be only an inspiring image to share on social media? Or is it more than that? Can the BiciBus experience transform the way children see the city, see themselves and the transportation choices in the future? What are the long lasting impacts of a Bicibus experience? If 10-11 year olds participate in the Bicibus today, later in life might they be more likely to own a bike? Might they be more likely to become an urban cyclist? What are the short term and long term impacts of participating in a collective urban cycling experience with other children? Can projects like Bicibus accelerate our transition to sustainable and healthier cities? We should all be working to watch and find out. 


Comments

  1. NickSeptember 19, 2022 at 11:37 AM

    It's very eye pleasing that kids are part of this also. I always support bike riding for the kids. Bike for kids now a days are very necessary. Before buying you have to cosider a lot of things as this is their first bike.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Beginnings for City Lab Barcelona

In September 2021 I began a new research position at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology ( ICTA ) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). It has been a pleasure to meet new colleagues and get settled down in a beautiful eco-friendly building that is LEED Certified. I look forward to focusing my research agenda on Barcelona and this blog will be a platform for sharing some of the research ideas that are emerging, and become sort of the embryo for the new research team based at ICTA.  My new research group will be called  City Lab Barcelona and our mission will be the generation of new knowledge that accelerates the transition to sustainable urban planning and design . To call a research team a Laboratory or Lab has become quite fashionable recently, especially in the social sciences. I welcome this analogy because there is much that we social scientists can learn from those researchers that run physical labs - of course, adapting as appropriate. In the case
Post a Comment
Read more

CICLOBCN21

  The CICLOBCN21 Conference brought together cycling organizations, activists, city policy makers, transportation wonks, academics, and cycling entrepreneurs on 7-9 October 2021 in Barcelona. As one of the largest cycling conferences in the Iberian Peninsula, it attracts cycling experts from Spain and Portugal. It felt wonderful to participate in an in-person conference again, to chat face-to-face and meet new people. For me it served as an introduction to the cycling community in Barcelona (and beyond), on a topic where I expect to be conducting research in the years ahead.   Here are my personal take-aways from the CICLOBCN21 conference:    *Cycling policy is activist driven. That is, a small group of committed and knowledgeable individuals have been pushing for change, and in most instances, the policy transformations are in response to organized pressure. My sense is that success is the result of close collaboration between the cycling experts and the administration. The gover
Post a Comment
Read more