Bike train offers Winnipeg kids safety in numbers, but more needs to be done: local father
Jamie Hilland wants Winnipeg city planners to remember that 'kids are commuters too.'
Another school year is in its full autumn swing, and with kids going to class—many of them on bikes—the streets of Winnipeg need to better accommodate the youngest riders on the road, one father told the CBC.
That, reportedly, is where “the Flaming Cheetahs” comes in.
Jamie Hillard, who escorts a squad of two-wheeling kids—including his own—to River Heights School in Winnipeg, gave his bike train that name. The idea behind the daily pack ride, he told CBC reporters, is to keep the kids safe on their bikes and to deliver a message to the rest of the city: kids are commuters, too.
“We often forget that in our city planning,” Hilland, program manager at Winnipeg’s Green Action Centre, told reporters. “There’s that little bit of animosity sometimes between cars and bikes, but we also forget that there’s kids on bikes, and they’re just doing their best to get to school every day, and sometimes we don’t consider them in our planning at all.”
Part of the Flaming Cheetahs’ strategy is to show city officials first-hand the challenges faced by Winnipeg’s most vulnerable riders. City representatives, the Winnipeg Police, the Winnipeg School Division and Bike Winnipeg all joined a recent group ride, which embarked from Hilland’s home to the kids’ school. Doing the daily ride in large numbers, he told those officials, has the effect of offering the youth greater safety, simply because of the larger, more visible group size—a benefit that riders of all ages come to learn.
“That’s sort of one of the main reasons we do the bike train,” Hilland said. “It’s bigger and it’s more visible. I’m in my yellow jacket, I’ve got my yellow hat, I’m at the front as visible as I can, we’ve got flashing lights and there’s a bunch of us.”
These measures are fine in the short term, of course. But in the long run, Hilland told the CBC he wants to see more bike lanes and better, more secure bike parking to get more kids in the saddle.
“We want to see kids walking and biking,” Hilland noted. “Physical activity gets them going everyday. They learn better.”
