3 Ways to get kids on bikes for Bike to School Week 2025

by | May 23, 2025 | Transportation | 0 comments

From coast to coast, people of all ages are embracing cycling as a safe, accessible transportation option for school trips. Bike to School Week 2025 (B2SW) takes place from June 2 – 6 in Toronto and Vancouver, with some different dates for other areas in Canada.  

Bike to School Week is an annual celebration of communities that embrace active school travel and cycling. These communities champion the benefits of wheeling (and walking!) to school, including: 

  • Helping kids lead healthier lifestyles and improving their school performance.
  • Reducing traffic and pollution, including cutting fossil fuel emissions.
  • Making school zones safer for vulnerable road users. 
  • Creating more equitable and accessible communities. 

Mostly, biking to school is just good fun! With bike buses, Kidical Mass rides, and bike jams/rodeos, Bike to School Week is the annual week-long celebration of the cycling movement in Canada.  

Here are 3 ways you can help support Bike to School Week, whether you are on a bike, in a car, or cheering on from the sidewalk!

#1 – Bike Buses – How to Increase Road Safety in Numbers

You may have heard of the walking school bus concept. A walking school bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults. It sounds simple, but it is a fun and safe way to travel to school.  

A bike bus is basically the same thing, but with a group of children on bikes accompanied by one or more adults. A bike bus creates a fun and safe opportunity for group travel to school. It encourages active mobility, promotes healthy habits, and provides a safer, low-carbon transportation option for students and families.  

Typically, teachers, parents, or caregivers will take on roles such as the bike bus ride leader or sweep and help to plan the event before the ride, which includes the identification of safe wheeling routes and meet up spots for participants as well as ride times and volunteer support to ensure a safer trip for all. 

Watching a bike bus go by is quite a sight! The flash of a high-visibility vest or raincoat (a reminder of the iconic yellow school bus) begins a parade of helmeted, smiling, young cyclists on their way to school. This viral visual was made popular in part due to advocates like Coach Sam Balto of Portland, Oregon.

@coachbalto

The #BikeBus is always a blast but when its over I watch video & I get to see my students flying to school. This is how students should feel about student transportation. It should be designed for them to thrive. @Bike Bus World

♬ original sound – Coach Balto

The popularity of bike buses is increasing in Canada. Events are taking place from St. John’s to Vancouver. 

Bishop Feild Elementary School in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, organized a ride-to-school event that attracted participants of all ages on bicycles (with and without training wheels!), pushbikes, and scooters. This smiling group wheeled its way through downtown city streets.  

In Charlottetown, Cycling P.E.I. trained bike bus volunteer leads. In Moncton, New Brunswick, students participating in the École Sainte-Bernadette’s bike bus were having so much fun that two officers from Codiac RCMP’s Community Policing Unit joined in to help promote road safety and reinforce that roads are shared spaces for all users. 

In Montréal, students at École primaire Laurentide took their bike bus one step further by designing the logo used to mark the vélobus (“bike bus” in French) route, which also serves École primaire Jean-Grou and École primaire Édouard-Laurin.  

The neon green and bright blue vélobus logo on the bike bus route serving multiple schools in Montréal. Source: Journal Métro.

In Toronto, Birch Cliff Public School, Corvette Junior Public School, and William G. Davis Junior Public School joined the Scarborough Bike Bus. The Scarborough Bike Bus is a community-based initiative funded through the City of Toronto’s Neighbourhood Climate Action Grant. It hosts weekly group rides to school and seasonal events like “Group Ride with the Grinch.” 

In London, ON, Mountsfield Public School and Orchard Park Public School took inspiration from Barcelona’s bicibús (“bike bus” in Spanish). They organized bike bus programs to get students biking, scooting, and walking to school. Students felt safer and had more fun traveling together.  

Patty Wiens, Winnipeg’s first bicycle mayor, joins bike bus/vélobus rides. Participating schools include École Provencher, École Henri-Bergeron, and Nordale School in the Louis Riel School Division.  

In Alberta, the Camrose Community Bike Bus touts itself as the northernmost bike bus in North America.  

In the Greater Vancouver Area, HUB Cycling’s Bike Bus Program provides funding to help several schools start and maintain bike buses. Participating schools include Emily Carr Elementary, Ocean Cliff Elementary, and schools in Victoria. Since the program began, over 700 parents and caregivers have expressed interest in the program, and over 40 schools have applied to participate. 

#2 – Kidical Mass Rides

Kidical Mass Rides are similar to bike buses, but the goal is to make a statement with numbers. That statement is that children and youth have the right to travel safely through community spaces.  

Kidical Mass Rides are part of cycling rights movements. The name “Kidical Mass Rides” is itself is a portmanteau of “Critical Mass Rides.” The Critical Mass Rides movement started in the 1990s with the goal of raising awareness and advocating for improvements to cycling infrastructure. Kidical Mass Rides do the same thing, but with a focus on youth participation. The goal is to reclaim public roads and spaces for young cyclists, to celebrate and exercise youth rights as deserving road users. 

In September 2024, over 200 children, youth, parents, caregivers, and supporters gathered on the streets of Halifax’s West End to joyfully protest for safer roads for young cyclists. Amelia Avis, a policy analyst with Natural Resources Canada, was a marshal for the Kidical Mass Halifax event, helping to facilitate the protest ride and ensure participant safety.  

“It’s just a bag of joy, right?” noted MLA Gary Burrill, who also took part in Kidical Mass Halifax. “It’s terrific. It’s a lovely thing to be around. You feel better about being alive.” 

In early April 2025, Cycle Toronto organized its own Kidical Mass event at Queen’s Park with Greenpeace Canada and For Our Kids. This event was organized in response to the Ontario government’s Bill 212, which calls for the removal of bike lanes and restricts the installation of new ones. Kidical Mass organizers planned the route to include the protected bike lanes surrounding the Ontario Legislature Building to demonstrate the importance of the cycling infrastructure in keeping cyclists safe, especially young and novice cyclists. 

Kidical Mass Hamilton also organized their slow-roll, kid-focused, cycling demonstration in April 2025, providing snacks and community fun while advocating for street safety. This family-friendly event rallied for the rights of kids and cyclists of all ages to enjoy public roads, while also having fun being active outdoors.  

#3 – Bike Jams

Bike jams (sometimes known as bike rodeos) provide youth with a fun and friendly introductory experience to cycling. These organized cycling events are popular in accessible spaces across the country like school sites and neighbourhood parks.  

A Bike Jam event introduces children and youth to basic bicycle skills, like balancing, manoeuvring, stopping, road safety, and bike maintenance. Many Bike Jams also include an obstacle course, which allows participants to practice what they’ve learned and ride with their peers in a fun and safe environment. A bike repair station may be an add-on to the festivities, offering free or low-cost help to ensure that cycling equipment is road-worthy.  

Bike Jams can be quite cost-effective. They require minimal resources for setting up stations, such as sidewalk chalk, halved tennis balls, pylons, etc. They can also be run solely by volunteer staff.  

In spring 2025, the Town of Bracebridge and the Town of Tillsonburg in Ontario held bike jams/rodeo events in their communities. A $200 bicycle was offered as a raffle prize for all participants.  

Bike Jams also charged ahead in the cities of Williams Lake, B.C., Grand Prairie, Alberta, Port Colborne, Ontario, and the Blackburn hamlet of Ottawa.  

Safer roads benefit ALL users

Bike to School Week is about more than cyclists. We need drivers, walkers, and all road users to participate. Safer roads benefit every kind of road user. There’s plenty of misinformation and divisive commentary about “a war on cars,” “bikes vs cars,” or that bike lanes make congestion worse for drivers and reduce sales for local businesses. We fight against that misinformation and fake news by appreciating that roads are for people. Bike to School Week is part of a much bigger movement to make roads safer and better for ALL the people who use them.  

Whether you are cycling or not, look into what’s going on in your community for Bike to School Week. Join in the fun, support the advocacy, volunteer your time and expertise, start something new, and saddle up for B2SW adventures. 

 

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