Pedal away: Charlottetown proposes 'bike bus' to get students to bicycle to school

The City of Charlottetown is proposing a 'bike bus' to get students to bicycle to school.

Anna Keenan likes to keep up with public transit trends.

The City of Charlottetown's sustainable transportation officer said she learned on Instagram of a new way students are travelling to school: a bike bus.

Instead of getting picked up by a yellow school bus, students in some cities across the world -- including in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Israel and India -- wait for a convoy of children on bikes, led by volunteers or parents, to pass by their home.

Keenan said she liked the idea so much she proposed at a city committee meeting that students from two elementary schools in Charlottetown start bike buses next spring.

"I'm regularly following trends across the country and internationally on what's happening on both public transit and active transportation," she said in an interview.

She learned about bike buses on the Instagram account of Sam Balto, a physical education teacher at Alameda Elementary School in Portland, Ore., who is the founder of "Bike Bus World," a movement encouraging cities everywhere to start their own bike buses.

Keenan said his Instagram page "basically has instructions on how to start a bike bus in your community, and his Instagram channel is full of really heartwarming videos of kids taking this group ride to school."