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I was looking out the window the other day and saw a middle-schooler biking home from school with her mom and dad. They were all on electric bikes (ebikes). It hit me at that moment that ebikes were really helping to increase school commuting by bike.

Also of note: we weren’t particularly close to any middle schools. Of course, we weren’t that far from a couple of them, but the extra support of an ebike presumably helped this family by making the commute in hot and sunny Florida more manageable.

This family caught my attention since it was three of them on ebikes and they were right outside our window, but thinking about it more, I routinely see kids commuting to and from school on ebikes now. It seems that more and more kids are using these to commute to and from middle schools and high schools in the area, as well as some kids using e-scooters and some using traditional non-electric bikes.

Unfortunately, now that I’m looking for research on this, although I see a lot of references to ebikes growing the number of kids biking to and from school, I’m not finding any data on it. A Google search for Florida specifically provides me with this AI response: “While there is no specific data yet confirming an overall increase in biking to school in Florida due to e-bike use, experts observe a significant rise in e-bike popularity among students, suggesting it is increasing cycling trips. This trend is most prominent in suburban and coastal areas where e-bikes offer an appealing alternative to car or bus commutes.” (I’d normally avoid using AI as a source, for various reasons, but in this case, unable to find clear research on it myself, well, I resorted to the AI machine.)

Let us know if you’re seeing an increase in biking to and from school in your area thanks to ebikes.

Overall, increasing biking to school is a big health booster, including mental health booster. Getting more kids to get out into the open air in order to get to middle or high school is going to make for physically and mentally more fit kids. “A growing body of literature supports the beneficial effect of physical activity on cognition in youth.^1–4 During adolescence, the brain shows noteworthy changes in both structure and function. Several studies showed that physical activity may be a positive stressor providing plasticity and flexibility to the brain,” a scientific article published in JAMA Pediatrics.

“The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of a 12-week randomised controlled cycling-to-school trial on cardiorespiratory fitness,” another scientific article, published in Sage Journals, noted. “Conclusions: This study indicates that cycling to school improves cardiorespiratory fitness.” Exercise makes for a healthier heart and healthier lungs.

But do kids who bike and walk to school really get more exercise? Yes, yes they do. “This study was conducted to determine if fifth-grade students who walked or bicycled to school on a regular basis were more physically active than those that did not,” the article in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise wrote. “Compared with both other groups, regular active commuters accumulated 3% more minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA; P = 0.04) during weekdays. This weekday difference was because of regular active commuters accumulating 8.5% more minutes of MVPA both before and after school (P ≤ 0.01). No difference in physical activity was seen among groups during school or in the evening. Based on the mean number of minutes the students wore their monitors on weekdays (800 min·d⁻¹), the 3% difference translates into approximately 24 additional minutes of MVPA per day for the regular active commuters.” How often do you see kids who bike or walk to school playing on the street after school? Aside from the exercise of the commute itself, many of these kids get extra time playing around with each other for a bit. Of course, there’s also the exercise of commuting with some muscles and effort.

Naturally, with ebikes able to go faster, kids (and parents) should take extra precaution during the school commute. “Heavy E-bikes traveling at high speeds are harder to maneuver and take longer to stop,” Safe Routes to School writes. “The average speed of a standard bicyclist is 12 mph. Type 1 & 2 ebikes can travel up to 20 mph (Type 3- 28 mph). This is a significant difference when considering the experience level of student E-bike riders.” Indeed. Ebike riders have quite a lot of power at their fingertips. That’s helping more and more kids to get to and from school easily and safely, but there’s an extra degree of responsibility that has to come along with that.

Circling back to my short anecdote at the top, I think parents ebiking with their kids is a good way to pass that sense of responsibility on to them. This couple ebiking with their kid stood out to me in part because it was a whole family, not just one middle schooler on her own or with a pack of friends. My wife and I have gone ebiking with our daughters numerous times — well, they don’t have ebikes yet, but my wife and I do, and I would like to think that shared biking has meant we’ve passed along good ebike habits to them.

Any other ideas or tips on this topic?

This article was kindly supported by Lectric eBikes.