SFMTA’s Safe Routes to School Program helping students use public transit to get to school

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) Safe Routes to School Program is helping students use public transit to get to school. According to a new survey conducted by the agency that polled public school students from the Safe Routes to School Program: 

• The number of students who bike has doubled over the last few years.  
• More than half of high schoolers take transit to class.  
• Single-family car rides have fallen to less than half of all school trips after going up during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“These numbers show us that our efforts to provide more options for kids to get to and from school are working and our overall efforts to make it safer to walk, bike, roll and take transit also are working,” said SFMTA Transportation Planner Ben Frazier, who serves as the coordinator for the Safe Routes to School Program.  

SFMTA says it conducts its student travel tally survey every two years and asks kids in kindergarten, 5th grade, 6th grade and 9th grade how they get to class. The agency talked with more than 10,000 students at 95 San Francisco Unified schools for this year’s survey. 

According to the agency, biking to school is now more popular than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially true for young students, as the number of students who get to school by bike has doubled since 2019. Overall, two percent of school kids now bike to class and kids in kindergarten are six times more likely to bike than older students. 

The agency says the increase comes as it continues its work to make biking safer:   

• Protected bike lanes and SFMTA’s Slow Streets Program helps people of all ages feel confident about biking.   
• San Francisco  is the first major city in California to put 15 mph zones in place at all eligible schools.  

Frazier says he often hears from families who love to bike to school, stating, “They tell me that it helps get children in the right mental state to learn, and it brightens up parents’ days, so I think this choice is a win-win for everyone.” 

Transit is the ride of choice for San Francisco high schoolers  

SFMTA notes the student travel tally survey shows that the older a student is, the more likely they are to take transit.  

• More than half of 9th graders (55 percent) take public transit to school.   
• About a third of 6th graders (33 percent) get to school on transit. 
• Transit accounts for just over a quarter (27 percent) of the total school trips.   

The agency says its free Muni for youth program helps make public transit accessible to students, and the agency also offers extra school tripper bus runs during the academic year.