As part of the Interreg North Sea Region SMALL project, the municipality of Saint-Quentin deployed the first fleet of bicycles in the primary school of Metz in 2024.
What if we encouraged shared mobility and cycling from an early age?
The French commune of Saint-Quentin asked themselves this question recently when testing its first fleet of shared bicycles for short-distance school trips in Metz primary school.
As part of Saint Quentin’s work in the European Shared Mobility for All (SMALL) project, the pilot aimed to develop a shared bike culture among children, raising their awareness of sustainable modes of transport and promoting an active lifestyle. There were also benefits for the school, offering greater flexibility to teachers to reach locations for school trips at a lower cost than the bus.
Cycle to lunch scheme – how the pilot worked
The first phase of the pilot started in March and ended in June 2024 with the school period ending., focusing on trips from the Metz school to a nearby school canteen (not all schools have their own canteen in France).
The selected route connected the school of Metz to the canteen of the Collery school along a 1.45km (2.9km to complete the round-trip). The route included only a small portion of cycling lane, with most of the trip on open road. Children were accompanied by two adults, one at the front of the group and one at the back.
The first step for the pilot - the national programme “Savoir Rouler à Vélo”
To make the pilot work, all children needed to feel confident on a bike. Fortunately, national programmes are in place for this. In France, the “Savoir Rouler à Vélo” (“know how to ride a bike”) programme was launched in 2018 to enable children from 6 to 11 years old to become independent cyclists, practise daily physical activity, and move sustainably.
In the primary school of Metz, 5 children out of 46 did not know how to ride a bicycle before the start of the training, according to Réginald Ternisien, manager of the Saint Quentin pilot. To ensure all pupils were safe on the road, the entire class completed Savoir Rouler à Vélo training prior to the pilot.
How did the first phase of the pilot go?
The experiment started with one group of 20 children who cycled to the canteen once per week. Later, the team made smaller groups of about 10 children, with; three rides organized per week. In total, 29 children participated in this first phase of the experiment.
Before starting the pilot, the local team was mainly concerned with the safety of the children, and the acceptability of the project to all the stakeholders involved, including the municipality, the canteen’s staff, parents and teachers.
To address their concerns, the team organized several co-creation meetings to include parents and other stakeholders in the preparation of the experiment. The itinerary was discussed and decided collectively. It appeared that parents were less concerned about the safety of children and more about their comfort when using the bike and ensuring their children would have enough time to eat at the canteen.
Once a suitable itinerary had been co-created, the scheme hit the road.
All pupils and accompanying adults enjoyed participating in the rides. They felt they had more time to eat in the canteen, even though the ride took the same time as the bus they used to use.
One day we had to cancel the ride, and all the kids were asking if we could do an extra ride to compensate for this missing one. When arriving at the canteen, joining the other kids, we could see that the kids were very proud; we also observed that they were bonding as a group of cyclists. None of the kids ever felt unsafe, and they respected the traffic regulations very well.
Finding the next gear - Improvements for future shared cycling schemes
A second phase will go ahead following the success of the scheme, with many improvements still to be made.
We should be communicating more within the city about the pilot. Our challenge is to be recognized; people need to understand that kids can cycle on the road. We want to create better cohabitation between road users.
The second main challenge is infrastructure. Not just cycling lanes, but also for bike parking. “It can be difficult to park 10-15 bikes next to a pool in Saint-Quentin for example. The city needs to ensure infrastructure is not an obstacle to the scaling of this service.”
The second phase of the NOMADES pilot will start in September 2024, with new classes experimenting with the fleet of bikes for new use cases.
European inspiration
This experiment has been inspired by the example of Belgium, where schools have their own fleets of bicycles, and by the Bicibús initiative in Barcelona, where children are accompanied by their parents to cycle to school every Friday.