Walker Tracker Blog

In Lecco, Italy, less than a hundred miles from Milan, the town has made a commitment to give up schoolbuses and encourage children to walk to school. The New York Times ran a fascinating article on the walking program, called “piedibus,” or “foot bus,” because the children walk in guided groups along a predetermined path.

From Students give up wheels for their own two feet:

Although the routes are each generally less than a mile, the town’s piedibuses have so far eliminated more than 100,000 miles of car travel and, in principle, prevented thousands of tons of greenhouse gases from entering the air, Dario Pesenti, the town’s environment auditor, estimates.

This inspired me to find out if there was anything similar happening here in Portland. There are no piedibuses, at least not that I could find, but there is a school walking program called Safer Routes to School which operates from a similar desire to improve the health of children while improving the health of the planet.

The Portland Safer Routes to Schools offers a selection of family-friendly walking maps based on each school’s neighborhood. These walking maps show recommended routes to school, the location of traffic signals, high- and low-traffic streets as well as offstreet paths, and even have a “map game” with child-focused instructions on how to read a map and plot a path.

Safe Routes is the national clearinghouse for walking safely to school. Check to see if there’s a program in your town — if there’s not yet, Safe Routes has information on how to set one up.

Of course – the best solution for running a wellness program with your organization is to get a Walker Tracker Private Level.

However, it’s certainly possible to run a successful walking program for your organization using the Walker Tracker community site. 

Here are a few tips if you wish to do so:

• Register yourself first
• On the lower right hand column there’s a box that says ‘invite a friend to Walker Tracker‘
• Go there and copy the ‘invite link’. Use that link to invite everyone in your organization. That way you’ll be able to see who signs up and when via the ‘View your invitees‘ page 

This will allow you to corral and track signups that are part of your organization.

Once everyone is signed up, remember that:

• You can create private groups (you’ll need to invite all those users to this group)
• You can create private competitions. Note that you can create a competition as private – play around with it to get it just as you want it – and then make it public.

If later you decide you need the extra privacy, administrative controls, branding and statistics that a private level affords, no worries! We can help migrate your users to your own program.

Walker Tracker has teamed up with getDowntown, a program of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, to create a private walking community on Walker Tracker for Ann Arbor, Michigan residents. The private level will be used to celebrate and promote Curb Your Car Month! We’re overjoyed to be part of such a great program. 

Considering that Prevention Magazine just voted Ann Arbor the 3rd most walkable city in the US this certainly seems like a perfect fit.  

The Ann Arbor development community is giving away 30 free pedometers, first come first serve, so stop by the getDowntown Blog to learn more about the Ann Arbor/ Walker Tracker contest.

note: If you’re an Ann Arbor resident and you’re already on Walker Tracker drop us a line for your options.

Interested in private levels for your organization or community? Let us know.