There were three major factors that affected the setting up of our bike bus. The first was my son starting at Shawlands Primary School in August 2021 and getting a bike for his fifth birthday. He was constantly asking me if he could ride his bike to school, but we just didn't feel it was safe to do that, so I had to keep saying ‘no’.

But then two other things happened. The first was us going to visit friends in Denmark and riding around on bikes on nice, protected cycle lanes, which was lovely. Then, the night we got home from that trip, I saw a video on Twitter of a bike bus in Barcelona called bicibús. Seeing maybe 100 kids riding their bikes down the street looked amazing. The tweet said that they started with five kids, so I texted some neighbours and friends with kids at Shawlands and suggested doing something similar. Literally everyone agreed that we should do it and two weeks later, we ran the first bike bus.

We have a couple of different start points, with the furthest one about three kilometres from the school, so it takes us about 20-25 minutes. The kids tend to be between six and eight, and we've created a little bus map with stops, to cater to different bits of the school’s catchment area.

We all meet at a central point and then cycle the last kilometre and a half to school together, mainly taking side roads. The school is on a big main road, but when we started, that seemed too scary. There's no cycle infrastructure on the routes we take, so we picked quieter streets to avoid the traffic.

The last section of the route is on the big main road, so the council has provided us with a gadget that helps us to control the traffic lights at a big junction, which gives us an extra bit of time and safety.

We saw this as a way to safely cycle with our kids to school. I don't think we ever thought we would be like the bike bus in Barcelona, but it's changed in the last 18 months: we're now hitting between 60 or 70 riders on the road. It's gone from being a cycling to school activity – which is still at the core – to become a lot more. It's been a community-building exercise, building links between neighbours and friends, between the kids, between parents and the school, and between different authorities. That community element has been a really joyful experience.

The traffic engineers at the council have been brilliant, supporting us in lots of ways, from banners at junctions to clever new technology, but all we really need is some protected infrastructure. Bike buses are a temporary fix: a cycle lane and some bollards would do the job. We'd probably still cycle together, but it would require a lot less effort. Glasgow now has plans for around 270 kilometres of cycle paths over the next 10 years, but in the meantime, we’ve had contact with lots of other people planning new bike buses. We were inspired by the Barcelona video and now our social media content is inspiring these other groups as well, which is lovely.

Gareth Johnson was in conversation with Craig Thomas.

‘Ultra Smart Cycle’ is the name of the bike-mounted remote controlled device that holds the traffic lights for Shawlands Bike Bus to pass through the junction safely together. Its creator, Sm@rt Technology, is shortlisted for a 2023 CIHT Technology and Innovation Award.

Words by Gareth Johnson, founding member of Shawlands Bike Bus in Glasgow

‘Ultra Smart Cycle’ is the name of the bike-mounted remote controlled device that holds the traffic lights for Shawlands Bike Bus to pass through the junction safely together. Its creator, Sm@rt Technology, is shortlisted for a 2023 CIHT Technology and Innovation Award.