Maryland’s schoolchildren aren’t walking and biking to school each day because of local school policies including liability concerns, a lack of sidewalks and safe routes, according to a new survey. The Maryland Department of Transportation survey found that less than 20 percent of schools support students who walk or bike, while about the same amount of schools actively discourage them. Meanwhile the survey found that 70 percent of Prince George’s County students are bused to school, along with 69 percent in Montgomery County.
“With obesity on the rise across our country, we need to create more opportunities for children to get exercise by safely walking or biking to school,” Maryland Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley said in a written statement.
Beyond the lack of exercise, walking and biking are also much cheaper than busing. A separate study from 2007 showed that statewide costs for school bus transportation had more than doubled since 1992, reaching $438 million by 2006.
In Montgomery County, alone, the new report said, busing takes up $90 million of the annual budget.
“It is not realistic to push every school to be a walking or bicycling school,” the report said. “Many are located in rural areas where children must travel long distances to get to and from school, and walking and bicycling are simply not practical in these situations.”
But it said that about 12 percent of the schools surveyed that discourage walking and biking are in suburban and urban areas where a significant number of students live within a comfortable walking or biking distance.
It’s not clear who is to blame. The report found that school district officials said that the local school principals make the decisions on whether to encourage students to walk or bike. But the school principals had said such policy decisions must be made by either the school district superintendent or school board.
Some principals also are concerned that students don’t know how to walk and bike safely, while others are concerned about liability issues. Some 12 percent of schools require parental permission slips, the survey found.
Yet some hurdles to biking and walking are more systemic. School districts’ transportation departments focus on busing, the report said, instead of looking at alternatives.
New schools are often located on the edges of communities, the report also said, where large blocks of land are available and cheap. But that means they often are surrounded by major roadways – or lack sidewalks — to make it safe for walking and riding.
