Kids March for a ‘Walkable’ School

  • Parents and students at Monee Elementary take over the road that leads to the school. They hope to raise awareness about an unfinished sidewalk that makes the route to school hazardous to pedestrians. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

There’s an ideal image of being young
and being in school. There’re the friends,
the apple for the teacher, and walking to
school. Well, the walking-to-school part is
off-limits to millions of children. Even if
they felt like getting exercise, some suburban
kids are too far from school or the route is
dangerous. Shawn Allee dropped in
one school that wants to change that:

Transcript

There’s an ideal image of being young
and being in school. There’re the friends,
the apple for the teacher, and walking to
school. Well, the walking-to-school part is
off-limits to millions of children. Even if
they felt like getting exercise, some suburban
kids are too far from school or the route is
dangerous. Shawn Allee dropped in
one school that wants to change that:

In the small surburban town of Monee, south of Chicago, police and firefighters are not
used to big protests.

But on the morning I visit, they’ve got one on their hands.

(sound of kids whooping it up)

Cops closed the street between a church and the elementary school.

Five hundred kids, dozens of parents and a smattering of teachers fill up the church
parking lot.

They’re ready to take over the street and march to school.

Parent Arnold Harper’s near the head of the line.

Shawn Allee: “What’s the special occasion?”

Arnold Harper: “The special occasion is about the sidewalks so the kids can get
safely to school. If you’re walking to school, you’re going to run into a part just
before the school. There’s no sidewalk and the kids have to walk out in the street.
Or if they’re riding their bikes, they have to ride out in the street for a brief
moment. You don’t want that – you don’t want your kid ever on the street.”

Allee: “So the school discourages kids from walking?”

Harper: “Absolutely.”

Actually, the parents and the school are tired of discouraging kids from walking.

They want someone: the city, the county, the state – anybody, to build sidewalks between
the subdivisions and the school.

So kids want to hit the street and make noise over the sidewalk issue – only they can’t get
started.

No one brought a whistle.

A snickering fireman takes things into his own hands.

(sounds of honking, etc.)

Kids walk past new homes and corn fields.

I find principal Joanne Jones in the crowd.

Shawn Allee: “In this kind of small town suburban environment, people are used to
driving. What’s the big deal that kids can’t walk to school?”

Principle Jones: “As we know, our country is suffering from childhood obesity and
part of the reason is they don’t get enough exercise. And we feel that if kids get an
hour, sixty minutes, of exercise each day, that would help them be more healthy.”

Allee: “You think if more kids were able to walk, they would?”

Jones: “Yes. We’ve had kids ask us before, why can’t we ride our bikes to school,
why can’t we walk to school? We’ve had parents let them ride their bike, while they
drive alongside. They want to do it.”

If Principal Jones wins this fight, she’ll be bucking a trend.

Very few children walk to school anymore.

Research shows in the sixties, about half walked or biked to school.

Now, only fifteen percent of kids do.

Missing sidewalks aren’t always the problem.

In suburbs and small towns, housing developers sometimes forget about pedestrians when
they build homes.

Heidi Gonzalez helped organize the walk-to-school rally.

She says school district rules and laws don’t always help.

Heidi Gonzalez: “You have to have a certain amount of open acreage when new
elementary schools are built. A lot of developed areas are finding it hard to find nine
acres of space to put a school on.”

Shawn Allee: “So there’s a requirement to plop a school down where they’re on the
edge of development instead of where there are a bunch of houses with finished
sidewalks and other infrastructure.”

Gonzalez: “Exactly.”

So, the school’s aren’t connected to their communities.

The kids had been whooping it up, but their enthusiasm dies when they reach the school’s
flag pole.

As for the adults, like me and Heidi Gonzolez?

We’re left behind.

Gonzalez: “Now we have the dangerous walk to go back to our cars.”

Allee: “Because we won’t have the luxury of police and fire protection.”

And it was a kinda scary to dodge traffic from the school to where the march began.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Watch Where You’re Walkin’

  • Just how easy is it to hoof it in your 'hood? A Seattle software company called FrontSeat created WalkScore.Com. The programmeers claim the site indicates whether a neighborhood offers residents enough amenities to get out of their cars. They hope people will consider the site's "walkability" scores when choosing a place to live. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Picking a place to live can be a huge
environmental decision. Some people argue
if you can walk to everything you need, you’ll
stay out of your car, and that will cut air
pollution. But how do you compare how ‘walkable’
one place is to another? Shawn Allee looks at a Web site that aims to make that a breeze:

Transcript

Picking a place to live can be a huge
environmental decision. Some people argue
if you can walk to everything you need, you’ll
stay out of your car, and that will cut air
pollution. But how do you compare how ‘walkable’
one place is to another? Shawn Allee looks at a Web site that aims to make that a breeze:

When urban planners want to know exactly how ‘walkable’ a neighborhood is, they
commission a study, and get results in weeks or months.

One computer programmer says this approach is poky.

“And so we built a piece of software that would let anyone look up to what they
could walk to from their address.”

Matt Lerner helped build a Web site called Walk Score dot com.

You don’t have to be an urban planner to use it.

Anyone can just type in an address, and …

“We tell you all the closest schools, parks, retail stores, so you can see exactly what
that neighborhood looks like.”

Walk Score dot com also spits out a number between zero and a hundred.

If a place scores above ninety, the site calls that a ‘walker’s paradise’.

Lerner says the computer ignores stuff like weather and hills, but there’s a reason behind
that.

“Research on why people walk has shown the number one predictor of whether
people will walk is whether there’s something good to walk to.”

This is all well and good, but does Walk Score dot com work?

I want to test it out – so I ask Lerner to score a Chicago neighborhood close to me.

“If you look at Logan Square, you can see it has a walk score of 86. So if you’re
living near Logan Square, you can get by without driving very often, or even owning
a car perhaps.”

Really?

I head to Logan Square and ask people, does the neighborhood deserve the high score?

Resident: “Yeah, we’ve got a movie theater, a grocery store, restaraunts and bars.”

Resident: “Yes, you can really minimize your use of a car.”

Resident: “Everything’s close – even jewelry stores, furniture stores, grocery stores.
It’s pretty easy to get around walking.”

Most of the people I speak to say the Web site’s pretty much got it right. This is a
very walkable neighborhood. But there’s an activist who works on making the
neighborhood more walkable. He’s not convinced the web site’s got it 100% right.
He says it leaves out some things, for example, this:

(sound of dog barking)

“You’re talking about kids walking to school? That house, that’s a barrier.”

And, Ben Helphand says the Web site doesn’t just miss dogs. It misses other things
that intimidate walkers.

“They should factor in these things that are known to decrease the walkability of the
neighborhood, a big gas station complex, a drive-through bank which is right
behind us.”

Shawn Allee: “Only because they’re hard to walk by, because cars are coming in
and out?”

Ben Helphand: “And because they disincentive people getting out of their cars,
because they’re designed to keep people in their cars.”

The programmers admit the Walk Score site leaves out a lot. Helphand says he’s a
fan of the site, it’s just that it’s tailored to one purpose.

“Their real target audience is people who are moving or relocating and they want
walkability to be a factor in that choice.”

Helphand says the site gives the impression that people interested in walkability have
only one choice to make – where to live.

He wants them to make lots of choices over time.

He wants them to fix bad sidewalks, tame scary dogs, and support zoning laws that favor
walking over driving.

Helphand says if that happens enough, we can make new walkable neighborhoods – not
just rank ones that already exist.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Clear-Cut Demonstration Angers Forest’s Neighbors

  • Stands of pine like this have been clear-cut to demonstrate an option that forest owners can take to manage their property. (Photo by Keran McKenzie)

Most forests in the Great Lakes region are privately owned. That concerns the U.S. Forest Service because the agency says many forest owners don’t know how to properly manage their woodlands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports that a new education project that demonstrates tree-harvesting techniques has angered some residents:

Transcript

Most forests in the Great Lakes region are privately owned. That concerns the U.S.
Forest Service because the agency says many forest owners don’t know how to properly
manage their woodlands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports that a
new education project that demonstrates tree-harvesting techniques has angered some residents:


(sound of chain saws)


Workers are cutting down trees in a fifty-year-old pine crop. At the same time, state
foresters are leading a botanist, a private tree farmer, and a reporter through this forest
education site. One of the foresters, Rick Miller, is directing the chain saws to show what
needs to be cut for what’s called a “crop tree release.”


“This one here we selected out with the orange flags, the trees that show the best form and
dominance in the crown. They have a nice big healthy crown. And then what we’re doing is removing
any trees that are touching the crowns of those ones that are orange, and just opening it up
to give the crown more room up there to spread out and possibly increase their growth and their
vigor.”


A forest owner who wants to make money off his pine stand might do a crop tree release to
improve the quality of the remaining timber. The bigger the tree, the more money it’s worth
to a logging company.


Heading deeper in, a crop of pine trees lined up like soldiers trails to our right, and wilder
hardwoods shade us from the left. There are signs to demarcate different timbering techniques:
improvement cut, understory removal, selective cut. Project manager Frank Corona stops at one
section of oaks, maples and cherries.


“You have small trees, medium trees, some larger trees. Trees are probably selectively
harvested in here and you have all different ages of trees in this stand…”


The cool shaded path abruptly opens up. The lush canopy is replaced by harsh sunlight.


GRANT: “Oh wow, so this is the clear-cut…”


CORONA: “This is the clear-cut.”


The forest is gone… cut to the ground. All that remains are the 120 hardwood stumps on
the torn-up dirt. Botanist Steve McKee suports construction of the demonstration site.
But he also loves trees.


GRANT: “What do you think when you see that clear-cut?”


MCKEE: “Well, clear-cuts are never pretty, ya know? So, uh, I think the most shocking thing
for me is I’ve walked in this my whole life and it was surprising. But I knew it
was coming too, so…”


But some people in the community say they didn’t know the demonstration project would include
clear-cutting older trees. Anne McCormack hikes the Mohican nearly every day, clearing trails,
cleaning garbage, or enjoying the woods. The education site has been roped off from the public
during construction. But she found out there was a clear-cut demonstration in an old growth
section of the forest.


“So, I just was… I was just shocked. I mean I can’t say anything more. I just felt
terrible for… I felt terrible for the trees that stood there since before white settlers
were even in Mohican. And there they just were bulldozed and chain cut for education.
I mean, it doesn’t add up.”


McCormack’s not the only one who’s upset. A lot of people didn’t realize this is what
the Forest Service had in mind. Back at the clear-cut site, Corona says many trees suffer
from disease when they mature to 120 years. He says it’s a good age for private land owners
to consider the clear-cut option.


“This was a time where before they would rot out or anything and we see more damage, more
susceptibility health-wise in the entire stand, we could make a harvest in here and utilize
those trees and start this whole new cycle of growth in here.”


The foresters and forest owners say clear-cutting is a viable option, and just one of the
many examples at the demonstration project in the Mohican forest.


Tree farmer Scott Galloway says people need to understand that owning a forest is another
form of family farming. For instance, he got a call recently from a man who inherited 30
acres and needed money right away. He doesn’t know how to manage his tree crop.


“Where does he go? How do you make the right decisions quickly? The faster he can make
decisions, in his lifetime with his forest, the sooner he’ll be able to enjoy the benefits
of those decisions. It’s all about forestry, wildlife, natural resources. So the more education he
can get, the better those decisions will be and the better off all of us are environmentally because of it.”


The Forest Service says a demonstration project is needed because forest acreage is getting
cut up into smaller and smaller parcels. That means the forests are owned by more and more
people who need to know how to manage their timber. The Forest Service hopes this project
will help them make better decisions.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

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