Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jason Greenberg on June 18, 2010 at 6:08am

I could also talk to admins at my kids school: Chicago Waldorf School. We've already had a bunch of these parents/kids attend other Kidical Mass rides and some of our families already do bike to school, but others could be convinced to do it with an event like this. Our school is located in Rogers Park on Loyola Ave. so it would connect with the Rogers Park community which is also very bike active...

I also know the teacher/advisor of the Eco Club at the Pulaski Academy,a CPS near Armitage and Western. They might want to host a "ride to school" kind of event.

But it would be great to hear a proposal from a new neighborhood we haven't KM-ed yet. Any ideas out there?

Permalink Reply by Todd Allen on June 18, 2010 at 12:20pm

We could/should go back there again as our Rogers Park ride was a bit of a bust due to cool weather and insufficient promotion.

But hold off Jason on contacting your until Hui Hwa gets back to me with a commitment or not. I wouldn't want to end up with multiple schools saying yes for the same month. If the first school ride works out well we could do another. Perhaps October? I'm not sure how late in the season we want to keep scheduling rides...

Permalink Reply by jennifer james on June 19, 2010 at 10:10pm

Why not choose two or three schools that are close together and make a neighborhood ride. Seems nice to go for a public school for September too. I'm sure there is a public school near the Waldorf School in Rogers Park that could use a bike boost! And it would be great for the kids from different schools to meet each other. Pulaski is near Burr and Drummond schools and it would be easy to do a nice ride around all three in a "Bucktown" ride.
On the topic of the greater message of the ride... "Riding to school" is a great idea but Chicago's streets are in reality far too dangerous for most students that are not riding two blocks from home on the sidewalk with an adult. Our family does ride to school some days but we found that the morning traffic is extremely dangerous for our nine year old. We live about 4 miles from school and he was almost run down by a busy driver. He is a very responsible and skilled rider but now we box bike or tandem to school instead of him taking his own bike. Many Chicago school kids- like at Pulaski -are actually bused from quite a ways away. Lots of Chicago kids live where being outside is really unsafe in general.
Creating an opportunity for kids to learn to ride safely and to have the experience of the power of a kid mass ride is wonderful. I think making the Kidical Mass experience itself possible might be as good as encouraging kids to ride to school.

Permalink Reply by Liz W. Durham on July 18, 2010 at 6:53pm

Todd...we had more kids at the RP ride than this past weekend's. I wouldn't call it a "bust".

Todd Allen said:

We could/should go back there again as our Rogers Park ride was a bit of a bust due to cool weather and insufficient promotion.

But hold off Jason on contacting your until Hui Hwa gets back to me with a commitment or not. I wouldn't want to end up with multiple schools saying yes for the same month. If the first school ride works out well we could do another. Perhaps October? I'm not sure how late in the season we want to keep scheduling rides...

Permalink Reply by Jason Greenberg on July 19, 2010 at 5:43am

The first Rogers Park ride was a great ride. I think that Todd was just acknowledging that our attendance numbers have been going down from the first few rides that had great weather and the advantage of being a "new event."

This points to a larger issue of promotion and "marketing" or basically maintaining good communication and visibility for our rides. Now that we have experience and multiple folks who can plan a great ride, we should focus on greater efforts to get the word out to more people, and get more media coverage to help increase our presence within the public's awareness.

I think the August rides could be low turnout (because of heat/high temps. and also many families being on vacation or away from home) but the September rides conversely could be huge with families returning and starting up school again. I think we should make a big push to set up promotions for the Sept. rides NOW so we have time to get the word out. But that means deciding NOW the exact dates/times/ and neighborhoods so we have time to promote them.

In September, we have the proposed possibility of:

1. Sat. Sept 11th: Palmer Square Kidical Mass (2nd Saturday)
I propose this ride focus on travelling to Koscouscio Park (as the midpoint) and back to Palmer Square.

2. Sat. Sept 18th: Floating Kidical Mass (3rd Saturday)
This would be focused on a Back to School/Ride to School theme
Possibly through the Finkl Academy, Chicago Waldorf School and other CPS schools

3. Sat. Sept 25th: Albany Park Kidical Mass (4th Saturday)
This would continue the AP rides that started this weekend. Folks expressed interest in making this a regular neighborhood ride.

Are there folks out there who'd like to take responsibility for planning/proposing the September routes for each of these rides now? Then we can make some posters and send them to schools, media contacts, post them on bicycle community and other community bulletin boards and blogs and etc.

Permalink Reply by buddaa38 on August 2, 2010 at 10:32pm

I'll see what I could come up with as to schools in A.P. I do think that Jason this would be a great ideal to notify the schools & media.