The Happy Pod: All aboard the Bike Bus

**Holly Gibbs** (0:00)
This is the HappyPod from the BBC World Service. I'm Holly Gibbs, and in this edition, all aboard the bike bus.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:13)
It's kind of fun, because you can see like, everyone riding, talking and riding with your friends and stuff. I love the bike bus, because it's always really friendly, and it's always really communal. It's good for the environment, and it gives us so much energy.

**Holly Gibbs** (0:30)
We hear about the success of this trend, which has gone viral across the world. Also on this podcast, how one woman spelt out kindness across more than 3000 kilometres.

**Nahla Summers** (0:41)
People were emotional about what I was doing, and I have never had, in all of the challenges that I've done, I've never had the amount of support and emotion over what I was doing.

**Holly Gibbs** (0:52)
Plus the success of the cervical cancer vaccine.

**Michelle Mitchell** (0:56)
The new research demonstrates that HPV vaccination works and saves lives, reduces the number of deaths of cervical cancer and we have the possibility of eliminating cervical cancer.

**Holly Gibbs** (1:11)
And?

**Tessa McWatt** (1:12)
It's wonderful. It's really, and specifically because it's this prize because I feel it was for my mum. The prize was awarded in Trinidad and she went to Trinidad every year.

**Holly Gibbs** (1:22)
The writer awarded a prize for the book she wrote about losing her mother to dementia.
Have you ever heard of a bike bus? It's a trend which is going viral on social media. It involves a group of children cycling to school in a large group following an adult for safety. And like a bus, the group makes stops along the way to drop people off.
Bike buses started a few years ago in Spain and Portugal and the movement has gathered momentum in the United States lately thanks to Sam, known as Coach Balto Online, as well as hundreds of thousands of followers. He's also got various celebrities to join his bike bus in Portland. Take a listen to this.

**Sam Balto** (2:05)
It's Friday, let's go ride in a bike bus. Four minutes till we leave. Does anybody want a sticker? Okay.
All right, bike bus.
I think bike buses are a really wonderful way to help build kids independence. We know that being physically active before school for children helps them focus better. They do better academically. They get in trouble less. They have better social relationships and you get the fresh air. You're not in the backseat of a car being sedentary. It's good for the environment. There's so many benefits. So the bike bus is a great tool to help bring the community together and also to advocate for safer streets. Just finished the Camden Bike Bus. Now we're heading to Lisbon for the Bike Bus Summit.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:47)
I was telling someone the other day, you're so supportive.

**Sam Balto** (2:51)
Thank you.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:51)
So, yeah, I mean, I just and I will tell you, I see more people biking.

**Sam Balto** (2:57)
That's awesome.

**Holly Gibbs** (2:58)
Well, we wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So we sent our very own Richard Hamilton to get on his bike and join a bike bus here in London.

**Charlotte Claydon** (3:07)
So there are two rules to the bike bus. Number one, you must stay behind me. I'm the leader.

**Richard Hamilton** (3:16)
Clad in a fluorescent pink, yellow and green onesie, Charlotte Claydon leads the Camden Bike Bus.

**Charlotte Claydon** (3:23)
The second rule is... Well done.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:28)
Bike.

**Charlotte Claydon** (3:30)
Bike. Bike.
Bike.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:37)
Okay, we're ready to go. Let's go.

**Richard Hamilton** (3:47)
We're actually going along on the bike bus at the moment. Of course, it's not a physical bus. There's about 20 children with little fluorescent bibs on, all following Charlotte. It's a bit like a mother duck and her little ducklings following along behind, and it's great fun. It's perfectly safe because there's people stewarding at the back, and you can hear in the background all the chanting, and the excitement, and the whistles, and they all seem to be really enjoying it.

**Charlotte Claydon** (4:18)
The school run can be a bit of headache for everyone, and I used to, I'm afraid, drive and it just used to cause me enormous amounts of stress and anxiety. I started cycling with my two daughters in the back of my cargo bike. Eventually, a lot of parents will notice they suddenly get too big for the cargo bike. So I was looking at ways to take my older daughter independently on the road, and it was literally that day that my friend sent me a video of an old, old, old friend that I used to work with in Pennsylvania in 2008 called Sam Balto, and he was doing these extraordinary images of this guy with two, like 200 kids shouting, singing, laughing. It looked like a disco on wheels, standing up on their bikes, waving and shouting and screaming, having the best time of their lives, getting to school together. It's so simple. It's so obvious when you see it. Of course, that's how we should be getting to school.