What a wonderful day it’s been in the bistate region: 10 local bike-to-school groups — each part of a growing international children’s active transportation movement known as “bike buses” (a play on “school buses”) — all pedaled their way to St. Louis-area schools today, with guidance from crews of dedicated adult helpers. 

On the Missouri side, five different groups of children started at various locations across south city, eventually merging into one huge wave of riders en route to an elementary school in south city. Meanwhile, on the Illinois side, five other bike buses, plus a walking bus, headed out to five different schools in Edwardsville! BWorks staff joined in at different locations in both states on their day off to help.

Everyone was awake, excited and engaged by the time we got to school — at least all the kids were, as parents and other volunteers sought out coffee upon arrival. :) Numerous studies both locally and nationally show that kids who get to engage in physical activity before school are more awake, engaged, have less behavioral referrals and, over all, test better. 

In St. Louis City, we heard kids happily shouting, “I’m riding my bike to school!!” (There were also suggestions that Spire road plates be turned into jump ramps for kids on bikes.) The excitement and joy is always high as these young cyclists build their skills and confidence, while also surely feeling like a million bucks as caring adult riders center these kids’ rights to safely move around their communities and make their way to school.

But the joy is tempered by a comment we’ve heard from kids multiple times over the years: “Why can’t every day be a bike bus day?”

Studies show that the main issue that keeps bike buses from running more consistently is not infrastructure or enforcement, but dependency on volunteers. (As one obvious example, this morning’s combined south-city group of well over 80 children plus all of the volunteer helpers had no safe infrastructure to depend on as we wound several miles through residential streets and crossed Grand, Jefferson and Gravois. The infrastructure we all thirst for is simply not available at this point, and won’t be until many of these kids have their own kids. But these rides prove that groups of kids with adult support, encouragement and safety-focused education can ride a bike to school safely en masse.)

Why can’t we ride every day, or even every week through the school year? It’s the dependency on volunteers’ time. The time and energy to coordinate multiple levels of logistics and safety preparations, map students’ home locations, make routes, handle liability and communicate with busy parents is significant indeed. It’s joyful, and difficult, work.

Yet as local, regional and national transportation-planning leaders grapple with escalating traffic violence, active youth transportation efforts mostly receive little to no funding. This is despite how inexpensive such programming is compared to infrastructure. And so the situation remains: If we want active youth transportation, we must depend on volunteers. And to be clear: Today’s volunteers on both the Missouri and Illinois routes were and are amazing, and clearly happy to help. But these people also have to make a living.

And so that really is the answer to the kids’ very reasonable and oft-repeated question of why we can’t do the bike bus daily or weekly — that these caring volunteers all have other responsibilities. But underlying that answer is, of course, a more disturbing fact: that despite many millions of dollars available right now, for example, in the City of St. Louis — funds we’ve all been told are supposed to be spent on making life better here — not one of those dollars is being made available for children’s active transportation activities such as bike buses. This is even as leaders tout plans to sink $300 million into infrastructure in the next few years.

This morning’s 10 bike buses to schools around the region embody the world that so many of us on the BWorks team and among our partner organizations dream of. We continue to work hard to create that world in small and big ways, day by day. These efforts are well deserving of support.

Three cheers for the bike bus,

Patrick Van Der Tuin,

executive director

St. Louis BWorks

St. Louis BWorks has worked with many partners over the past couple of years alone, including, for the first time ever, the City’s Department of Parks & Recreation. In the last year and a half, the BWorks education team prepared four different six-week-long Earn-A-Bike cohorts at City-owned-and-operated rec centers, with multiple BWorks teachers committing time, energy and talents to these efforts.

However, in every case, the City did not adequately hold up its end of the contract, which BWorks has now canceled as we move on to other class offerings to fill the gaps and make the most of our capacity to meet ongoing demand for our Earn-A-Bike, Learn-To-Ride and Earn-A-Computer offerings.

We’ve begun moving students who were scheduled to complete Earn-A-Bike at one local rec center earlier this month to other cohorts at other locations, and any families affected who still are in search of a solution may contact our programs director at evie@bworks.org.

The most frustrating and frequent issue, including with the most recent cohort, is that often there has been no one on site at a given City rec center to open the building for our teachers, students and families. This is despite multiple site visits and in-person conversations, and many phone calls and emails in advance to the department to ensure all are on the same page. It’s unfortunate and unfair that these facilities can’t be opened on time, as agreed, when families are waiting outside for programs. We won’t ask local children to have class on the sidewalk any more than we already have due to these situations.

We’ve also had the City leave us in the lurch, days away from a planned six-week course at one of the rec centers, with a staffer texting us that routine maintenance on the building would leave the facility unavailable during the class. BWorks scrambled and secured an alternative location for the group in that case, knowing these families had blocked out six weeks of time once a week to commit to the class, and wanting to do right by them despite the failure on the City’s part.

On top of all of this, we have been told we must not recruit to fill these classes, that the programs are for “OUR kids.” We are still lost on what these comments, received by BWorks team members from several different people within the city parks department, are about. Are programs only for kids already involved at recreation centers? Is there no value in getting new local kids at these centers in their neighborhoods?

In every case, we abided by the department’s insistence that we not try to recruit kids in our shared community ourselves, but predictably, classes were not filling up, because of an outdated, overly complicated registration system families were forced to use (RecDesk). And so a week or so out from each course launch, knowing BWorks has many folks on waitlists for our classes at our headquarters and other partner locations, we would hustle to start making calls and emails to fill empty spots (which is why three of the four cohorts still ended up with a significant number of students). But this has been totally unmanageable as a system for registering students for a multi-week commitment.

The parks department seems unwilling to grapple with the need for programming providers to have information about registrants and key contact info for their caregivers, and the need for both BWorks and families to be in communication about plans well in advance.

We shared these concerns with elected officials, including the City committee, early last week, and have yet to receive any meaningful response to our expressed concerns or requests for help on next steps. BWorks is asking that City-based funding for recreation not be tied solely to the recreation centers, and that funding for programs be available for use in any of our amazing community parks instead. Removing this barrier would allow groups such as ours to act independently and deliver the programs we are good at, while removing the unnecessary roadblocks to our own residents.

We share this unfortunate situation not out of any sort of spite but truly because St. Louisans deserve consistently accessible, welcoming rec centers. St. Louis residents deserve, and could have, better. BWorks deserves better too, in exchange for a lot of hard work that went into these four cohorts – four of more than 100 groups of children and teens we have served in the past year and a half.

The BWorks team is excited to have recently welcomed Wesley Wilcox as a part-time bike mechanic. It was just a handful of years ago that Wesley completed the Earn-A-Bike program growing up, and now he is busy refurbishing bikes for current students.

We recently checked in with Wesley, who began working with us earlier this summer, to hear how things are going so far and learn more about his love for the world of bicycles, and particularly BMX.

He said bikes have long been an important aspect of his life, even when he was very young. One of his earliest bike-related memories took place in a local library.

“I’ve always been interested in jumping stuff and making little ramps and stuff,” Wesley explained. “But as a kid, I actually found a book at the library about BMX racing, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is sick.’”

By age 10, he was regularly spending time at Benton Park-headquartered Ramp Riders, an indoor skate park and pro shop, and by 12 or 13 he was volunteering there. Then in high school he landed a job at the facility, where he still plays an important role.

“My family’s just always been a big bike family,” Wesley said.

He’s especially invested in the culture and history of BMX. He films videos, and has a sponsorship with Animal Bikes. But he also does a lot of riding on his mountain bike and road bike around the St. Louis area.

“It’s freedom,” Wesley said. “You can get from Point A to Point B really easily. I feel like in the city at least you can get places easier on a bike sometimes.”

He uses his bikes for everything, including food delivery at times.

“I load up my bike trailer with laundry, I go to the farmer’s market, I go to shows,” Wesley explained. “It’s very fun, it’s very relaxing and takes my mind off things. I just go out and explore the city on my bike for a couple hours.”

That sort of freedom and utility, both as a kid and now as an adult, is something Wesley wants to see every young person experience. When he’s at the shop, his enthusiasm while working on a BWorks student’s selected stead is obvious and infectious.

“I love getting kids on bikes,” he said. “Whenever I’m building a bike, I want the kid to be hyped up about the bike.”

Over the course of the past six and a half years, longtime staff teacher Mark Smith has worked with thousands of BWorks students in our Earn-A-Bike, Earn-A-Computer and Learn-To-Ride courses. He’s been an integral part of BWorks’ success in inspiring local children and teens to dream big, care about the world around them and explore new possibilities through experiential learning.

He’s done this work for many years alongside an intensive day job, most recently serving as a local middle school English teacher. But this month, Mark is beginning a new chapter with BWorks, taking the plunge to join us as a full-time employee. This is a huge and exciting change, with Mark eagerly taking on a variety of offsite classes and events this fall, many of them in partnership with local schools, in addition to regular duties onsite at our headquarters. Mark is also a big asset for our mechanical team.

We recently sat down with Mark, who is an avid mountain biker, to ask him a few questions as he enters this new phase.

We’re so excited to have you on board in an expanded role. What are you most excited about as you look toward a bigger role with St. Louis BWorks?

I really love teaching. My most recent full-time job was teaching middle school English. While it was extremely fulfilling, something was missing. I missed “home.” Home for me is being involved in the outdoor recreation industry. It is something I have done for more than 20 years, and BWorks marries two things I love to do. I enjoy being an ambassador for cycling and being a conduit for young people in hopes they take an interest in outdoor activities. That is what I am most looking forward to. St. Louis BWorks wants to reach more students and provide them with outdoor recreation opportunities, and I want to be a part of that change.

When did you first become involved with BWorks, and what do you remember about those early days with the organization?

I started working at St. Louis BWorks in the spring of 2017 or 2018. My initial time at BWorks was spent working in the bike shop. When I was asked if I wanted to teach, I jumped at the chance. I spent most of my initial time as a teacher with BWorks teaching Earn-A-Bike classes offsite. Getting paid to ride your bike is the best!

Sometime we should count back and document just how many Earn-A-Bike, Learn-To-Ride and Earn-A-Computer courses you have taught as a BWorks teacher. You are quite the BWorks veteran and will now be teaching even more, year-round! As a teacher, why do the lessons in our programs stand out to you, or what do you think sets them apart? And what keeps you motivated to keep delivering these classes to local students?

Yes, I have taught a lot of classes at BWorks. (This really seems like a slick way to say I am “old,” but I will answer your question.) Our classes help open up kids’ minds to possibilities. When we teach the students about computers, we are demystifying a machine they use every day. Teaching the students how to stay safe on the road, while riding their bicycle, lets them know a bicycle can stand for freedom. There are so many things kids can do nowadays, but I enjoy seeing them realize riding a bike can unlock so many other enjoyable adventures. My daughter is a graduate of both the Earn-A-Bike and Earn-A-Computer courses. I remember when she decided to ride her bike to her grandmother’s house on the other side of University City from our house. This class helped prepare her for that adventure.

My motivation comes from me being able to continue to help others come to these realizations — and others I may have not thought of yet.

Are there one or two moments that have stuck with you over the years? Can you describe the moment(s) and what made it so special?

Yes. Once I was teaching an offsite class. It was day five of the class, so we are not quite ready for the graduation ride, but we have been working on drills and playing games to get the students ready for the graduation ride. This particular day we were playing The Incredible Shrinking Room. The goal of the game is to stay on your bike and stay inside the circle that gets smaller as the game goes on. It is a great game for working on your slow-speed bike handling. But this particular day, I had a student realize she could just slowly ride straight toward other students and benignly scare them into putting their foot down on the ground, which would eliminate them from the game. I made eye-contact with the student, and she knew that I knew what she planned to do to win the game. She then proceeded to glide straight into another student’s bike. It did not work since both students put their foot down on the ground, but I laughed out loud when she decided to make a go of her sneaky strategy. It was hilarious.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Just that if there is ever a St. Louis BWorks West, say, somewhere near the mountains, I am putting in for a transfer. LOL.