Neel Ramachandran’s favorite part of his morning commute to Hastings Elementary School is gliding down Massachusetts Avenue before turning onto Crosby Road – on a bike, that is.
“I love it,” Ramachandran, a kindergarten student at Hastings, told LexObserver. “You get to enjoy your energy, go fast, and you get to have a lot of fun.”
Ramachandran learned to ride a bike with training wheels a few years ago. Last year he graduated from stabilizers, and this spring, he’s breaking in his new “big bike” with the Hastings Bike Train.
A bike train is a group of students, typically led by a parent or volunteer, that bikes to school together. The group often follows a route on which students live so they can be picked up along the way, much like a train.
Hastings’ bike train is led by Lexington residents Jonathan Schwarz and his wife, Shannon Murtagh, who have two children at Hastings and one older child. They were redistricted from Bowman Elementary School to Hastings right before COVID-19, which made for a longer commute to school. As avid cyclists, that came with a silver lining.
“We realized we were passing all the other families on our way to school,” said Schwarz.
They decided to give their long-time dream of leading a bike train a shot in the spring of 2022. The couple mapped out some stopping points along the route (intersections, street corners, the hill at the top of Massachusetts Avenue, etc.) and alerted parents of the train online. They didn’t expect much of a showing, but 75 students, clad in helmets, joined the group on its first ride.
Massachusetts’ Safe Routes to School program, or SRTS, has helped Lexington build its biking and walking community since Hastings’ bike train took off. SRTS encourages students to walk or roll (bike, scooter, rollerblade, etc.) to school instead of riding in a car or on a bus. From that partnership, the town was able to make maps that show students the safest routs to take if they want to roll.
Lexington’s police department has also been “outrageously supportive,” Murtagh said. When the group turns onto Massachusetts Avenue from Forest Street, it’s met with a lit-up police car ready to escort them up the hill and down to Hastings.
“It goes from being exclusively a practical thing to some kind of rolling party,” Schwarz said. “It feels really special to the kids.”
He and Murtagh have hosted bike trains about every other week since the spring of 2022, with breaks during the winter. About 35 students join each time. The students are “immensely chatty” and love the freedom of riding their bikes to school, Murtagh said.
“It’s really nice to chat with [friends] while we’re biking,” Theo Schwarz, Murtagh and Schwarz’s son who’s in fourth grade, told the Observer. “It’s like a much funner way to go to school and it’s nice to not have to sit on the bus.”
Originally from the west coast, Schwarz and Murtagh have biked for years. They even competed in a few bike races before having children. The couple wanted to start a bike train in Lexington because biking is an environmentally friendly transportation option.
“I love that the kids are these little environmental warriors,” Murtagh said.
“The number of miles that people drive back and forth from their house to school is a lot,” said Schwarz. “If you can replace just some of those trips with other forms of transportation, it has a huge environmental impact.”
Children love the freedom that comes with learning how to bike responsibly and it’s convenient during high-traffic hours, the couple argued.
“On the rare occasion that we drive to pick our kids up from school because they have an appointment or it’s actively hailing, it’s actually really inconvenient,” Schwarz said. “Whether you’re doing the car line or parking, it’s a huge hassle.”
They have garnered some funding from parents, local businesses, and the town. With that funding, they bought medals, colorful stickers, and lawn signs to advertise the bike train dates. They also advertise through the PTO newsletter and on social media.
Even when the bike train isn’t running, Schwarz and Murtagh bike with their children to school. Three years ago, their oldest child’s bike was the only one on the rack every morning, they said. But since they kickstarted the Hastings Bike Train in 2022, the rack has nearly 40 bikes on it every day.
“That was the ultimate push behind this,” Murtagh said.
The Hastings bike train is next scheduled to run on June 6 and on the last day of school.