Chula Vista hops
on 'walking school bus'
Program promotes exercise, less traffic
Anneke Guluma, 5, and her brother, Tanu, 7, of Heritage Elementary
held a sign yesterday extolling the virtues of walking to
and from school. Heritage Elementary School students walked
to their designated stops, where they waited not for a fuel-
guzzling bus, but a train of people on foot to pick them up.
Heritage debuted its "Walking School Bus" program
yesterday, which was Walk to School Day for the entire Chula
Vista Elementary School District. The idea is to get kids
out of cars and SUVs and onto sidewalks.
"Part of our
culture is we've forgotten how to walk," said Marieka
Yoder, the parent organizer of Heritage's Walking School Bus.
"I want the bus to become part of the neighborhood infrastructure."
In 2002, the Chula Vista Police Department analyzed traffic
at Heritage Elementary in east Chula Vista because drivers
were clogging nearby streets and the school's entrance at
the start and end of each school day. The study found that
kids were passengers more often than walkers, with 48 percent
of kids driven every day versus 27 percent who walked every
day. The remaining 25 percent walked part of the time. |
