Bicycle Network is reigniting its campaign to allow teenagers to ride bikes on footpaths in Victoria and New South Wales on the eve of National Ride2School Day tomorrow, Friday 23 March.
While more and more younger children are riding to school, the number of teenagers that ride is at a terrible low. When bike riders in Victoria and New South Wales turn 12 they are kicked off the footpath and pushed onto the road, causing them to stop bike riding all together.
Bicycle Network CEO Craig Richards said that it’s time we stopped forcing people older than 12 to ride on the road with cars and trucks and start making it easier for them to ride a bike and be active.
“It’s terrible that teenagers these days don’t ride their bikes as often as we used to, but at the same time, it’s being made hard for them to ride,” said Mr Richards.
“Teens want to ride to school, but they don’t want to have weave through traffic and worry about cars speeding next to them.”
Bicycle Network’s Ride2School program is incredibly effective among primary schools where more than 50% of students are regular bike riders, however once students head to secondary school their bike riding drops off.
“One of the reasons is that when students turn 12 and move to high school, they also have to move off the footpath and ride on the road. They feel uncomfortable and don’t want to ride anymore” added Mr Richards.
“If we changed footpath riding laws in Victoria and New South Wales we would see more students continue to ride bikes all the way through secondary school.”
This Friday 23 March is National Ride2School Day when more than half a million students around country will get pedalling for Australia’s biggest two-wheeled bike party.
It is the flagship event of Bicycle Network’s Ride2School program which works with more than 1,200 schools to help develop an active culture and combat physical inactivity among young people.
“Children need 60 minutes of exercise a day to stay healthy and riding a bike is the best way to do this. We need to make it as easy as possible for young people to ride bikes and this includes allowing footpath riding,” added Mr Richards.
See Bicycle Network's footpath riding campaign See more about Ride2School