Tree Hugging Family - Living Green

Weekly Green Audit: School Transportation

by Jennifer on February 24th, 2008

For this week’s weekly green audit, we’re going to continue with green school audits. With the server issues last week, we didn’t quite finish. This is actually the fourth time I’ve tried to post about school transportation; a topic that appears to shut down this blog :)

I read in a book once that if you attend school for 12 years that’s over 5,000 trips to and from your school. If you multiply that number by all the students you go to school with; well, that’s quite a lot of transporting to and from school. This week we’re talking about greening our schools. Today we’re looking at transportation.

Obviously 5,000 transports even multiplied by just 10 results in a lot of pollution created by cars or buses.

Questions to consider for your school include:

How you and all the other students get to school each day - walking, cars, carpools, school bus, city bus, bike?

Does your school have a drop-off and pick-up system that could be improved? Often you see schools where parents line up and sit idling in their cars twice a day.  Does the school have space for an extra parking lot where parents could park? Or could a sign be posted asking parents to turn their cars off as they wait for their kids after school?

Is there a decent carpool program in place? The upside of a neighborhood car-pool to school is not only that you’re living greener, but that you save time. Parents who share a child carpool get four days off and one day of transporting kids - depending on how you divvy up the schedule.

Is there a good school bus program - school buses aren’t that green pollution-wise, but they do create one massive transport system. In the long run, one school bus carrying 40 kids may be better than 40 cars idling for a half hour each day.

Options for change:

Can you walk to school? Or bike? If one parent in the neighborhood volunteers to walk or bike a group of kids to school each day that’s a huge reduction in pollution cause by cars. Plus you get exercise, so it’s a double bonus. In my neck of the woods, I know parents who drive their kids to school, even when school is only five blocks away. Most often the reason cited is weather. It does rain a lot here - but come on. You won’t melt in the rain. If you’re not an Oregonian you can even carry an umbrella (real Oregonians don’t).

Can your school change their schedule? Most schools in one community start and finish at the same time each day. This creates a lot of traffic. Since traffic is stop and go, it’s more polluting than not having traffic obviously. If all the schools in the local area run on different time table, your community may be able to cut down on gas use and traffic stress.

If it’s in the budget, your school could even look into greener school buses:

Michigan greener buses

Hybrid School Bus website

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POSTED IN: Green Schools, Transportation