Dr Trent Smith has a prescription: School Streets for Kamloops

Kamloops Pediatrician Dr. Trent Smith is a passionate advocate for active transportation, starting with the basics: how our kids get to school.  Kent talks to Peter about the benefits of getting kids out of cars, building safe routes to school, changing cultural norms around cycling, the success of this spring's 'Drive to 5' pilot project, and how we can start moving the needle beyond major urban centres.

Read more about the City of Kamloops Safer School Streets HERE.

To exchange ideas, contact trent.smith@interiorhealth.ca.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Pike, the East Cycling Coalition's podcast where we talk about all things related to cycling advocacy. I'm your host, Peter Latin, East Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. My guest today is Dr. Trent Smith. He's a pediatrician in Tamlo. And the medical lead for pediatrics in interior health. And Trent has taken up a very passionate interest in kids getting to school in more active ways than driving. Welcome to the podcast, Trent. Thanks very much, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here. Could you tell me, like, when did you when did the light go on for you about safe routes to school and why that would be important?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

You know, it's been a long kind of, I guess, personal journey to get to the point of understanding that school streets might be a way to address some of the challenges around child health. So, you know, I'm a pediatrician. I've been engaged with child health for the entirety of my professional career. And what's been obvious to me over the years is that the role that physical activity plays in health is obviously becoming understood, but perhaps not emphasized enough in terms of daily physical activity and moving around. And that's caused a lot of thought around what can an individual pediatrician do to try and change that. And so that uh in a rather convoluted way that I'm happy to talk about has has led me to the School Streets program.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Could you tell us um why is it important? Like what is it, what what's so great about kids being more active generally, and in particular, taking advantage of an opportunity to walk to school? What what happens as a result of that if they if they do get more active?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Well, I think activity and and exercise in general um has really been shown to be um one of the best things we can do for our overall health. So again, I came at this um really from trying to look at how can I improve the health of my patients. And um I've had a longstanding interest in in child health and childhood obesity and uh chronic disease management. And um, and I've come to the realization that as individual physicians sitting in our offices, there's really not a lot that we can do to prevent uh people from developing these conditions. So doctors are great at treating things. And if you come to me with high blood pressure, you come to me with diabetes, or you come to me with problems with your cholesterol, I mean, all of those things we're fantastic at managing. Um but having an individual conversation with an individual person or family in my office doesn't really change culture to any extent. Uh, and so as um as physicians and and health professionals in general, we're really beginning to understand uh more and more that exercise across the age span really uh is one of the best things that we can do for our health. And that's our physical health, our mental health, our social health. People who are physically active do better on all of those things. And and you know, there's more and more evidence that suggests that although there's been a long-standing focus on people's body size, um, that's probably actually not terribly closely related to their health at an individual level. So what seems to be a much better predictor of overall health and well-being is how physically fit are people rather than what the scale says about how big they are. And so what we've um we amongst the pediatric health group have realized is that it's it's really difficult these days in the way we live our lives to have our kids get enough physical activity. Um, participation Canada, their most recent report shows that uh kids across Canada are scoring a D minus in terms of their letter grade for physical activity. Um, and that looks at things like you know, what do you do on a daily basis, how often are you outside? And I think we've had a long-standing kind of belief in in probably the Western world that physical activity is something that we should do. We should set aside set aside time to go to the gym, or we should sign our kids up for soccer, or we should have them in ballet, you know, all of these things, which are great, but don't tend to promote daily physical activity. And so one of the big challenges um that I've been trying to address through you know advocacy for programs like this is how do we get kids back to being kids where they are outside moving themselves on a daily basis, regardless of what the weather is. And and one of the challenges with compartmentalizing physical activity is it's often the first thing to go. Uh so if the weather's bad or COVID comes and the pool shuts down, or whatever happens, um, then all of a sudden your physical activity level drops. Whereas I'm becoming a bigger and bigger proponent of how do you build in those daily pieces where you're not scheduling it, you're not thinking about it, it's just part of what happens. And and what we see from kids who get that is yeah, their their school performance is better. If they have things like ADHD, it doesn't cure their ADHD, but it might help them manage it better. Um, obviously, their long-term physical health, if you uh adopt early habits around walking and rolling and moving yourself to get places, uh, there's really big benefits down the road in terms of your future risk of diabetes or your future risk of cardiovascular disease or hypertension. So that's really what it's about is trying to figure out how do we automate uh physical activity rather than plan physical activity.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Do you ever prescribe walk into school to a kid who's having some physical problems? Say here's part of what I want you to do, here's your cure.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Yeah, you know, I talk to families about it a lot, but again, there's I've moved beyond where this is an individual decision. I think there are so many societal things and cultural things that happen that it it really is often difficult for a family, even when given a prescription, to change. Um that's not to say that we don't do it and talk about it. And and certainly I have had families come back and say, you know, we we did that and it's actually helpful, but it's difficult because if you don't have a sidewalk or or you don't have a bike, or there's a major arterial that doesn't have a safe intersection, or you know, your parents have a fear about these things, then you know, regardless of what might be quote unquote best for your health, as with lots of things with health, people balance their priorities and their fears and their needs and wants, and um ultimately that's what leads to their decision. And so I think a big part of it is is socially changing to make it easier for for people to make those decisions and support their kids.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Well, I noticed that uh the statistics show that uh 10 years ago or 20 years ago, I'm not sure how many. It used to be that almost 50% of kids would come to school by some form of active transportation, cycling or walking, and now it's just over 10%. What have you what has been your observation and what have you decided to do about it?

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Um there's undoubtedly multiple, multiple factors that have contributed to how all of us get around in the city, and that includes how children get to and from schools and activities. And um I'm not entirely sure that there's any one thing that's driven it. I think there's a number of social constructs, there's um general cultural things that have occurred, um, there's the way that we've built our cities, and I think all of those things have come together to make it so that our culture has now arrived at the conclusion that we should drive our kids to and from school. And I think the undoing of that is really going to require um some substantial changes in in culture. And that's the million-dollar question, I think, is how do you shift culture?

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Well, shifting culture when you're up against a billion-dollar industry that's marketing every day in every way to get people into their cars and into bigger cars and more cars is of course a challenge. But you have done something in Camloops. What did you tell us about what you've done?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah, so Kamloops, um, and I'd really like to put a plug out to the actually the city and the school district um for jumping on board this um project. What we did was we kind of copied um a program called School Streets, which has was developed in Europe in the late 1990s and is has gradually taken hold and spread through a number of different countries in Europe and in different levels, and then has come to North America and most recently was started in Vancouver. I believe they're now on their fourth year of the School Streets program in Vancouver, um, and has been adopted by a couple of other of the lower mainland communities. Um, and so Kamloops was the first, I'm going to say, um, semi-urban area to to embrace this sort of project. Most of the time, these things seem to happen in in large urban areas. So yeah, we took it on in Kamloops this year, and uh it was great.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

So you did a two-week pilot project in in late May, I understand. And you were going to monitor the results. Do you have any data on how it worked? What changes resulted?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah, so um we did take on a two-week pilot project. And I and I guess just for people who don't know exactly what school streets might be, it's an area uh of road closure to motor vehicles around a school. So basically what School Streets does is shuts the road down to motor vehicles and opens the road up to use for people, really, people on foot, people on wheels of any sort. Um, and so we we did that around one of the schools in Kowloops for a period of two weeks, coinciding with uh Go by Bike Week. Um, and then looked at um a number of factors uh around wet change. So the city took on some traffic count data looking at motor vehicle movement in and around the school, both before, during, and after the project. And then we did a bunch of um what are called hands-up surveys where teachers within the school asked their students, uh students within their classrooms, how did you get to school today? And they did that again before, during, and after the project. And what we saw was um a reasonable amount of mode shift actually. So um about 30% of people within the school shifted their mode during that uh during that study period, and and the majority actually moved from their car to walking. So the school that was chosen is in an area of town that's quite flat. Um, does have some limitations in terms of there's a major arterial that bisects the school catchment area. Um, but what we saw was that a number of uh children and families chose to walk rather than driving. We saw some uptick in cycling as well, although it was less marked than the shift from automobiles to walking at that particular school.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Could you describe, you said that you've closed off streets too. How far away from the school did you go with your closure?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

So for us, we did it uh a relatively small area. Um the school we chose is you know largely within a rectangular grid of streets. And so we closed off two of those, which left um sort of an L-shaped area of access to the schools. I learned a lot during this project around um jurisdictions and road use and bus schedules, and you know, there's a there's a number of moving pieces that all have to go into a project uh like this that I will admit I was blissfully unaware when I first floated the idea. Um I think the the big thing is is accommodating school buses uh because many schools act as a hub for children to be picked up or dropped off at that school to go elsewhere. So you so it's um it's essentially impossible to say that the bus can't come and go. Um but we did manage to close off an L-shaped area uh around the school.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

So do you consider kids coming in the buses? They're not they're still getting a ride to school, they're not really being more active. Do you did you do any of these things like dropping them off five minutes walk away and making having them walk the final five minutes?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, so that the drive to five uh concept was promoted um to the school beforehand. I think it's a it's a great concept. I don't know if you took the average person on the street and said, Do you know what drive to five is? I'm not sure that that many people would actually understand or or be able to name what it is. So we did some education in the school beforehand and said, hey, look, you know, we recognize that there are a whole bunch of competing factors in terms of um allowing kids to be active on their way to school. There's parents who are on their own way to work who potentially need to be dropping their kids off. Um there are kids who live outside of a one-kilometer uh area. There are parents who had legitimate concerns about young kids crossing the rather major arterial that bisects the school catchment area. So um we did talk about um drive to five, and we did see on our surveys there were there was some uptick. I think about 5% of the um survey population chose to do the drive-to-five. Um, and it, you know, I as a bit of an anecdote, um, I went down to the school on a number of days during the project just to see how it was going and see what was happening. Uh, and it happens that the school is on one of our better bike routes in Cam Whips, actually. And so I rode my bike and passed a family who were uh loading or unloading their scooters out of the back of the SUV a number of blocks away from the school, and the kids were super excited and jumped on their scooters and scooted along the bike path to get to school. So I think those things are are clearly um part of the goal of the program.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

It sounds so weird that you have to go through all these um organizations and struggles and partnerships and collaborations to recreate the situation that used to be somehow prevalent, that was people were felt safe enough and uh secure enough and active enough that they could just walk or cycle to school. But somehow all these barriers seem to have arisen. And uh obviously it takes a lot of partnership and working with all these jurisdictional moving parts. What was that like? Did you spearhead all that? Getting all those people together?

SPEAKER_01 15:34

You know, I I started it, but as I say, I I um I I thought a number of times as we were developing the pilot and and talking about it, is that it feels like perhaps the time is right for these sorts of things because there were a number of uh people from within the school district and within the city, as well as within interior health, that that when they caught wind of it, all said, you know, that's that's kind of under my portfolio. That's part of the goals of what I'm supposed to be doing in terms of climate action and mode shift and healthy lifestyle behaviors. And there's there's a number of different things that fall in amongst programs that different people have. Um, and so I I hesitate to say that I spearheaded it. I I think I kind of felt like I was the guy at the top of the hill who made the snowball and gave it a little bit of a push. Um, and then it really picked up momentum as as a number of partners got on board. And and as I say, people really seemed to feel like actually this is something that that falls under my jurisdiction and and I would like to be part of it. So um the the embracement um from the school district and from the city, I really can't speak highly enough. There were a number of people that made this project happen. I didn't have anything really to do with actually getting it uh up and running other than floating the idea and getting the right people talking to each other, I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Well, I'm very pleased to hear that it's like rolling something down a hill rather than up a hill. Because it's nice to hear that people get it. It seems from you know where I sit and where all of us sit in in the cycling advocacy world, such a complete no-brainer. And why are we making our kids sick and obese by taking them to school in the name of helping them out? But um could you then tell us how, if another community wanted to do this, where would they start and what are the easy or simplest first steps?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Well, I think that's that's a big part of why I took this on. So um in my role with Interior Health, I'm charged with um evidence-based implementation of things uh for children across interior health. So I really don't want this to be two weeks uh at one school in Kamloops, and everyone, you know, claps their hands and pats each other on the back, and then that's it. Um and I was very clear about that right from the start. That to me, this is something that we really need to start looking at from a cultural lens and and perhaps make it a little bit like the um provincial mandate for speeds within school zones is is start to think about how do we how do we mandate that schools across the province um do a better job of being welcoming to kids uh and less welcoming to cars. So, in terms of other people being interested, and how do you get started? You know, I really think the city plays a major role because ultimately the city is in charge of the streets. So the example I often give is that if a city has to do road work or you know, tear up a sewer line on a street, it doesn't really matter where that street is located. Ultimately, the city has the jurisdiction to say the road is closed. Um, the same thing goes for local streets for projects of any sort. Although I've also learned that even within that, there are other jurisdictions because not all streets within a city belong to the city. There are some which belong to the province. Um, and so depending on where the school is located, there may have to be conversations with provincial jurisdictions around rope A's as well, though those do tend to be fairly major roads and bridges, which would be extremely difficult in our current climate to ever completely close, I think. So largely it comes down to the city and traffic engineering and permitting to be able to say this this street is closed. However, for these projects, I think the school district and the school itself really needs to be involved and on board as well. So although the city could simply say we're closing this street near your school to motor vehicles, I don't think that that's the approach that's likely to really allow this type of program to become a cultural shift. So start with the city. Anyone who's advocating for this kind of thing really does need to speak to their city. Um, and whether that's city leadership in the form of mayor and council or whether that's um we did a lot of work with our transportation team. Um, but different cities, it might be different um members of the city admin team. So healthy communities team might be the ones that that's uh really where you can find a champion within the city. And I think that's the key piece is finding someone within your city who um feels like this is a good idea and something that they want to push and and work with with other city departments to make it happen. And then also enlisting, obviously, the school district and and ultimately identifying a school or schools.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Trent, when you're selling this to people, why why why do this? What are the benefits? Why is it a good a good idea?

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Um, as you said earlier, Peter, I think there has been a there's been a gradual shift in our culture. Um, one of the anecdotes that that really brought this home to me was uh in my office, I often speak to families about the importance of physical activity. And I often ask kids, you know, where do you go to school? How do you get to school? Um and I had a family who were first generation Canadians. Um, and they told me the name of the school and and where they lived and and that they drove to school. And I happened to know the school quite well in the area, and I said, Well, wait a minute, like can't you see the school from your house? And they said, Oh yeah. And I said, Well, but why do you drive? And they looked at me like I was a asking a dumb question, and they said, Well, but everyone in Canada drives their kids to school. And and so they had never really like that it sort of was one of those light bulb moments for me where I said, you know, that you're right, like you're not you're not making a mistake. You're doing what everyone does. And you are trying to assimilate, you're trying to be the Canadian that you want to be, and you have looked around you and quite intelligently said, everyone here drives their children to school. That must be what we have to do. Um, and so I think that just speaks to the fact that it has become part of our culture and it's it's sort of an accepted norm. Um, and so in in terms of what we could do to try and shift that, I think it does need to be multi-pronged. I think it it needs to be part of the point of these programs is to get people to think about it, right? Because I think lots of people don't sort of think. They look around and they go, well, that's how everyone gets to school, and I have to get to work and I'm driving, and so I'm gonna take my kids. Um, there are certainly safety concerns uh that people have. And and one of the things that we did hear about our project from a number of people actually, and I thought the feedback was quite legitimate, was that um the feedback was, well, you guys, that's all well and good that you close the streets around the school, but I don't live next to the school. I live six or seven blocks away, and between my house and where the safe zone is, there's no way to get there, or there's no way that I feel comfortable sending my child there. So these sorts of programs certainly do have to be part of bigger picture things like safe routes to schools and better urban design. Um people have told me that they're worried that uh they can't let their kids go to school on their own because social services might get called because it's um not safe to have a child of nine or ten walking on their own to school. So, you know, that's also a uh a perception that's out there that people don't want to let their kids go independently to school because that might then mean a knock on their door. So I think all of these things are things.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Does that ever happen? Is that a real fear?

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Uh you know, that's a good question. Is it an urban legend or is it real? I mean, there have been reports of of people, um, again in bigger urban centers who've had their kids traveling by bus or SkyTrain or whatever, and and someone has said, you know, where's your mom? And the child says, well, they're at home. I'm going to whatever, and and they make the news. Now, whether that's a frequent occurrence or whether that's much like many things in our world where you hear about it on the news one time and you think that it's a common occurrence, that I can't speak to. I don't think there's a a ministry policy um that speaks to it.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

So if another community wanted to do this, uh where would where would somebody, if I'm a parent and I I think I'd really like to get my kid more active, but I'm concerned about all these things you said, unsafe routes and so on. Um where do they start? Do they start with the school saying to the city we need some more safety around here? Or do they go to the city and say we need sidewalks or we need bike routes? Where does it start?

SPEAKER_01 24:42

I think for um school streets type program, I really do think that uh as these things become more and more um socially accepted or popular, whatever you want to say. I think that as parents um going to your school principal or going to your school district leadership and saying, Hey, why are we not doing this in our school district or why are we not doing this at our school? And what do we need to do to make it happen at our school? Um and then from there, um having a champion and it and it could be the parent champion who also goes to the city and says, Hey, uh, we need some help with this. This helps with our city's stated climate goals or our mode shift goals or whatever. And and as I said, with our project, we really found a number of people who were willing to champion it at the city level. Um, but I do think I'm hopeful that we'll get more and more grassroots. So I kind of view the CamOops project was a little bit top-down in that I didn't have a child at the school that we did the pilot in, and it sort of was an idea that came through the city. Uh, I think there's room for that. I think there is certainly the possibility for any city transportation planners or clean air advocates listening to this podcast who might say, oh, you know, actually we could potentially do that. But I also think there's a lot of room for bottom-up to have a parent who's looking around at their child in their school and says, you know, I think we could do better to take that forward. And I'm hopeful that they would receive um the kind of reception that I got uh here in Camloops.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

So, Trent, before we wrap up, you've done the two-week project, and as you said, you don't want to have it end there. Ideally, this would be happening at all schools at all times. How do you go from your two-week project to scaling it up and make now that you've learned something, what will it take to make that more prevalent in other areas?

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Well, Camloops, uh, we've already started planning and we're gonna make it happen again next year. We hope in more than one school, um, and we hope for a little longer than the two-week period. Um, as part of my interior health role, I'm also um planning once school is up and running in September to reach out to other cities. I've had some interest from other cities about uh doing something similar, and obviously it's a little more difficult because I'm not a resident of other cities, um, but I'm hoping that uh across interior health we'll get another couple of communities on board. And I guess that's really um how I would envision this happening is it gets momentum in in some key areas, starts to become something that people hear about and think that they would like to see in their community or their child's school and start advocating for it. And um when I started this uh in giving talks to try and get people on board, I used the analogy of of um cigarette use in BC. So I'm old enough to remember when you can go to the restaurant and the bar and and smoke. And I was actually in university when um when they first started to make some night spots, non-smoking and and the uproar. And you know, if you look at old newspaper clippings, the entire hospitality industry was gonna fold because no one would go out if they weren't allowed to smoke. And and it ultimately took a city of Vancouver uh leadership as a local bylaw for the for the non-smoking that then gradually rolled out and ultimately became a provincial law that the province took on and mandated across the province. And I would view this as kind of a similar sort of thing. As I said, there's already 30 kilometer an hour speed limits around all schools, but I think ultimately where I would like to see this uh go is that there's a recognition on the part of the province that we shouldn't be driving that close to schools and that all schools end up with areas that are close to motor vehicle traffic.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Well, that's the mandate of the BC Cycling Coalition to get out of the lower mainland and address some of these issues that are peculiar to the smaller communities. And I I completely take your point that you've got a much bigger challenge. Very often, uh, you mentioned the provincial government and the the highway is really in some of these streets, it's the main street. And if you want to go anywhere or do anything, you gotta be on the highway. And then what happens? You know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

You know, it's one of those things that I was super proud about about bringing this kind of project outside of the urban environment. Because if you look at the infrastructure and and you get the mode share in the lower mainland in terms of people um who ride, it's vastly different than well, then here. And then I just was in Quinnell two days ago on my bike, and and you know, they have nothing. Um, they have some share rows here and there, and and that's about it. So yeah, it's uh it's one of the things that I really was impressed with was that we took it on because that these things tend not to be as embraced in communities um that are our size and certainly smaller than us. Yeah. And you know, a lot of these things are such big social pieces um that again, I think you just have to start somewhere and say, you know, we're not doing it right. Um Um the pendulum has perhaps swung too far in one direction. How do we how do we swing that pendulum back? And what are the pieces that we could put into place to start swinging that? But um yeah, school streets is a very small, a very small piece, but I'm hopeful that um it's the start of something and at least gets people thinking. And I think you know, you get people thinking about the way they do stuff, and then that's how you can start gradually shifting other people's minds and and habits.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Fantastic. Well, all the best, and we we really wish you wish you well in your project and your continuing efforts to do this, and uh and hopefully this will become as obvious as not smoking to improving kids' health and and well-being and academic performance. Thanks so much, Trent. Thank you, Peter. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for listening to Bike Sense and supporting Safe Cycling in BC. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. BC Cycling Coalition relies on your support to continue our work. Please consider becoming a member and adding your voice to the call for safer and more accessible cycling in BC. Special thanks to our sponsors, BC Hydro, Richards Buell Sutton, ICBC, Moto, and the Bicycle Pro. Visit us at BCcycling.ca.