Gosia Polanska from Manley Park Primary School shares her experience of setting up Manley Park Bike Train.
Gosia was nominated for 100 Women in Cycling for her work in setting up a bike train to help pupils at Manley Park Primary School cycle safely to school. She is passionate about getting more families cycling for everyday journeys. She worked tirelessly with other parents to help set up the Manley Park Bike Train which sees more than 50 children regularly cycle to school.
This conference was made possible by Leigh Day; Lawyers Against Injustice.
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Uh I’m going to move on over to Gosha next Gosh Palanska who is um representing from uh Cycling UK on her stall as I said but today um she is going to be talking about the amazing work she did um with the Manley Park bike. I’m just going to bring up the uh presentation. Thank you for having me. As Kaz just rightly mentioned, I’m here in two huts. I had started with Cycling UK just a month ago and this is my stall. And if you have any questions about how to make how to support adults uh in cycling more uh we I hope we can help in the whole of Greater Manchester. But I’m here and thank you for having me. I’m here to talk to you as a volunteer and a mom um about a story really of how to write how to go to school in a very joyful way and how that makes a huge difference to our children’s lives. I’m not going to be talking about the school street at all because I think the your introduction Hannah was just absolutely mind-blowing. Uh this is Manley Park Primary School in Wally Range and everything started with the school street. I’m going to be talking about um small starting small um ride to school and we ride as um group of families um every Friday. Uh and at the moment we started small two years ago um exactly in May 2 years ago and at the moment it’s still 50 riders every single Friday on average. Um and we never stop except if it’s icing. Uh can we move on please? Sorry. Um so yes we change how our street look like and how they feel like. We started um we I I I think what what I need to say at the beginning is that we normalize this. This is the normal way of a four-year-old could to go to school. Um on the picture you can see our meeting point uh which is a large drive to a local community center. Um meeting points I can talk to talk about them further on. Uh this is our poster very recent one. We didn’t start as sophisticated as this one. But the most important here thing to say is to clearly very clearly signpost where people are supposed to be what time and not to change it once you announce it. Um before we start to talk about bike train everything started with the school street and cars and Emma from walk ride wall range are the most fundamental people to this and we have we would have never changed anything without the school street. So it’s a I would I would challenge Hannah’s um um point on on this is these are the ripple effects for us. It was the other the other way around. It was first the school street and their determination to change the space and many years of work with the neighbors res further further on residents as well as the school. And then all of a sudden once we started to volunteer on the school street, we saw something very different and we saw we heard because the noise levels and the and the sound was so important. And I still very well remember those first volunteering shifts when I was absolutely overwhelming and flooding cars with all my written notes of how we feel as parents walking and cycling to school and how this is making a huge change. And then a few two years on exactly our chair of governors is saying to us how different this feels as well from the school’s perspective. And I’m not the one to talk about this but she I still remember when she she came and she said you know how teachers feel their children completely differently every single day when we have enough of volunteers to um marshall the school street. So everything started with that image, with that feeling of being able to breathe differently, to hear the birds, to see the space. There’s so much space in front of the school. And if there isn’t a school street, it’s just always so busy. So, and the other um what happened before is we simply had a parent who reached to us and said on one of the PTA groups and said, you know, my little one is reluctant to ride in the evening. It was not really the evening, but in the afternoon, dark afternoon of winter. And one of us said, “Well, why don’t we ride together to make him feel more comfortable?” And this literally is how our bike train started. Then I started to investigate um there’s it’s obviously not the first one. Uh there was a couple in Manchester in a little bit different conditions in Leven or through all throughout the fellow loop which makes things a lot easier. We started reading the Sustrron’s guidance was one of the most fundamental as well as the cycling UK ones as well as the um cycle frog I think and one of the Scotland’s primary schools. There’s lots of guidance online on how to set up your bike train. It’s much more popular in continental Europe, but let’s not go there. So I started reading and the first thing and that’s my academic background is I thought I well let’s educate each other. So I I I I thought about this right leader training that I had absolutely no idea what it was. It is basically to give people give confidence confident um cyclists um even more confidence to be able to run a group ride on the road. But in this case with children and parents and believe me parents are sometimes less predictable than children are. And um so I I just started to to investigate how to arrange one. I didn’t want my vol if I’m going too much to the detail please let me know. We we didn’t want volunteers to pay for it. Um so we started reaching out to different organizations and this is hats off to TFGM um who very well responded to this idea and supported our first training and I can’t really emphasize more to speak to parents friends and friends of the friends parents in the school oneto one so rather I know it’s it’s a hustle but rather than doing any group announcements, any big events at this stage. This is pre-bike train start to talk about an idea and how it looks like and how it feels like. Now, nowadays there are different examples in Manchester of which I can talk about later that are visual visible and people are most most welcome to come and visit them and ride with them. You you’re all most welcome to come and ride with us every Friday. and to see for yourself how it how it works. And the last but not the not the least important point is the still before the bike train has started is the uh insurance. So public liability insurance for every group ride that’s a little formality but it’s really important because you have a group of parents and children on the road. You have ride leaders responsible for them in many ways. So even before all the rest after the writing the training and before anything else it is uh a good idea to get uh public liability insurance for your group and I can advise on that as well and and I can’t emphasize this enough not to advertise before you actually are incredibly incredibly confident. The image of thank you for slowing down is from one of from our initial months. So this is this is the slowest ride you could ever imagine. Uh the so it’s never the the the route to school if you think about it. It’s never short. It’s never too short. It’s absolutely fine to have two three streets. It’s absolutely enough for children of four year five years old. It’s absolutely enough. The most important thing is for them to be left turns, not the right turns. And uh as Hana was rightly saying, never enough of uh different fun aspects of it. So here is our signature penguin uh our mascot of the bike train. Then uh the next important point is to establish a meeting point. So to then be able to clearly signpost people of where to meet, it really isn’t a corner between two streets and a and a fragment of pa of a pavement because there’s lots of weight and those 10 minutes in the morning while everyone is gathering. Uh you really want to have lower curb, you really want to have a much wider space than uh only a pavement. Um so this is to be discussed but a drive for example a a piece of um um of lawn just just part just little park but a drive to a community center as an example of ours. It’s really best to establish that meeting point first before and make sure that that’s the one rather than advertise it afterwards. In terms of the route, as I said, it’s never absolutely never the uh never too short. It’s best to to start slowly. I have never insisted on numbers here. Absolutely never. I was always happy with riding with just one family. So to have a group ride, you have to have at least two ride leaders. So two qualified people. You don’t have to have them qualified as STR’s guidance rightly say but I do advocate for people to be qualified. There’s lots of different organizations cycling in case one of them who can help with that and it’s one of the most impactful interventions I have seen because if you are a confident rider and ride with others you change how people behave on the street and on the road on the pavement and it’s really friendly. It’s about sharing space. That’s why we thank you for slowing down rather than anything else. That’s why it’s it’s really really positive experience and I hope that comes across. It is important to pilot rides as many times as possible. So before advertising again, before saying this to all other parents to pilot ride as many times from that meeting point, different routes, hidden alleyways, um as much as off-road as possible, of course, but if it’s not possible, ours are all um in very urban spaces. Uh yes. So it’s best to uh pilot ride with the with your families first with the ride leaders families first. So those most confident and then once you are confident enough to go and invite others. Um there are always ride leaders are incredibly friendly people. So if you invite one, they would eventually find a time and come and ride with you. And then they would share this very simple for for for an experienced ride leader advice in terms of the meeting point, in terms of a better route. As I said, always left turns, not the right turns. Um, we I should have said I’m not sure if I should say this, but we never ride on the pavement because that’s against the law. And we teach our children not to ride on on the pavement. So we are not bikeability but this is gaining experience not only for children but also for parents how to ride on the road with them. Um one of the best ways to um yeah and advertise as much as you can afterwards. This is self advertising enterprise. Once people start seeing a group of riders, they just want to join. Um, and this was uh thanks to um there’s two lovely schools on on College Road where our school is and this was thanks to invitation of uh our following speaker. Uh we had this lovely assembly uh and our bike train was going to our San St. Margaret on the other side of College Road. Um just to mention we’ve done many many many different side projects as a side project of the bike train. So thanks to DFGM again we have uh the school now has an e- cargo bike and they can uh travel more sustainably between the school sites. There’s two just like Beaver Road this is two school sides school juniors and and infants are separated. We we also organized so many street parties, haven’t we? Um and very colorful um um parties really to to gather community and to imagine how the schools how the streets could look like and the clean air um stores in our earth hour. We have we have uh also um applied for uh new bike parking for our children which is now in place and well used. Um and this is also thanks to TFGM and we also rode with year sixes who are going to the high school very soon as volunteers as parents who wanted to offer this very very short rides uh to gain more confidence. there’s there’s increasing um anecdotal increasing evidence that high school children write less than primary school children. These are all the things I’ve already said um in terms of the documented impact of what we’ve been doing and a bit of a visual of what’s next. This is uh Charlton Pike Primary who had just started a month ago and they’ve got 70 plus riders every single Friday and they got inspired by us and there’s seven other primary schools who are also riding on a regular basis to school and changing their communities. And I’m always always happy to talk to you if that’s what you’re after. Happy riding. [Applause]