Students Give Up Wheels for Their Own Two Feet

This piece from the New York Times looks at a program in Italy the encourages children to walk to school.

1 minute read

March 27, 2009, 12:00 PM PDT

By mahoneykp


"Each morning, about 450 students travel along 17 school bus routes to 10 elementary schools in this lakeside city at the southern tip of Lake Como. There are zero school buses.

In 2003, to confront the triple threats of childhood obesity, local traffic jams and - most important - a rise in global greenhouse gases abetted by car emissions, an environmental group here proposed a retro-radical concept: children should walk to school.

They set up a piedibus (literally foot-bus in Italian) - a bus route with a driver but no vehicle. Each morning a mix of paid staff members and parental volunteers in fluorescent yellow vests lead lines of walking students along Lecco's twisting streets to the schools' gates, Pied Piper-style, stopping here and there as their flock expands."

Thursday, March 26, 2009 in The New York Times

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