A key supporter of Coconut Grove’s Bike to School Days looks back at how the twice-yearly event has grown since May 2021.
Editor’s Note: Kurt Kaminer is the Safe Streets / Multimedia Manager of the BikeSafe Program at the University of Miami, which has supported Bike to School Day events in Coconut Grove since 2021. As the program continues to expand to other areas of Miami-Dade, Kaminer looks back at his involvement in these community-driven events.
Four years. How time flies. I still remember that first Bike to School Day on May 17, 2021, when I looked up and saw Shipping Avenue filling up with families on bikes as far as I could see. My jaw dropped. I remember thinking, “it’s happening, it’s here – this is Miami’s Utrecht moment.”
That was my introduction to what would become one of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever been involved with – the Walk Bike Roll to School Day (WBRTSD) events that happen twice a year in Coconut Grove.
The most recent event on May 1 – with a pop-up bike lane at Coconut Grove Elementary and a partial street closure at Matilda Street and Oak Avenue – was the seventh event that the University of Miami BikeSafe program has supported, in partnership with the Coconut Grove Elementary Parent Teacher Association (PTA).
Many have spoken about these events as if BikeSafe started them. I really want to make it clear that BikeSafe has merely been a loyal supporter of the PTA, the community, and neighborhood kids.
While we’ve provided many of the materials for the pop-up bike lane, hosted the “painting parties,” and designed some of the event flyers, at heart these are grassroot community-driven events.
Make no mistake, the real heroes of the effort are the PTA parents who launched it. They invited us to help lead the ride back in 2021 and that’s how everything started.
I still remember standing at Blanche Park, expecting maybe a dozen riders at most. How wrong I was. 40 riders showed up. This has grown to 168 parents and kids participating in the “bike bus” ride to school as of the May 1, 2025 event.
That does not even account for the additional kids who arrived at Coconut Grove Elementary on foot with their parents – 191 in total – or those riding in Radio Flyer wagons – the very image of a Beverly Cleary kids’ book come to life.
Speaking of heroes, there’s also Lotte Purkis of Grove Connect and Friends of the Commodore Trail (FCT), who went door to door for five years to get as many schools as possible to participate in WBR events, and Hank Sanchez-Resnik, co-founder of both the FCT and Bike Coconut Grove.
These dynamos made sure that Coconut Grove Elementary wasn’t the only school having all the fun; every school in the Grove was onboard.
The FCT also donated the tempera paint used for the last two bike lane painting parties at Coconut Grove Elementary, along with further support from the League of American Bicyclists (co-founded by Kirk Munroe, one of Coconut Grove’s pioneers) and a National Safety Council Road to Zero grant.
There’s yet a third hero in this story – the Miami Police Department’s Commander Daniel Kerr. I met him for the first time in 2021 when BikeSafe was asked to support the Wynwood Brewery’s “La Rubia” bike ride and family day.
During one of the planning meetings, I was joking about making a bike lane in Wynwood with green finger paint – I think I’d just re-read one of my favorite stories about Akron Better Block which had done so to pilot a bike lane with the city – and Kerr didn’t hesitate for a second to let us do exactly that.
He planted the seed. Less than a year later, the WBRTSD event at Coconut Grove Elementary had a pop-up bike lane on Matilda Street. Since that first pilot in May 2022, there have been seven such events – one in the Fall and one in the Spring each year.
Given the steadily increasing participation each year, I would say it has been quite the success and by no means a fringe coincidence.
But it’s not just about the bike lane. The big difference last month was the addition of a partial street closure (aka, a modal filter) at Matilda Street and Oak Avenue.
For anyone driving through, it might have looked just like a bunch of traffic cones and a “Do Not Enter – Except Bicycles” sign, but it made an immense difference.
First, the modal filter helped align bike riders with the pop-up bike lane. Secondly, it routed all drop-off traffic on Matilda Street that day onto Oak Avenue toward McDonald Street (SW 32 Avenue) instead of continuing north on Matilda into a residential neighborhood.
Thanks to the professionalism of Commander Kerr’s team, the drop-off traffic flowed quicker than I’d ever seen during any previous event.
Speaking of traffic, school drop-off car counts fell by 30% on average across the last three events when compared with the day prior. The least improvement we’ve ever seen has been 24%, and even that is nothing to sneeze at. Heck, in Miami, that level of traffic reduction might even qualify as a miracle.
As I look back on these events, I hope the community continues to encourage traffic calming efforts like these. There’s so much support from the PTA, the FCT, and the civic-minded neighbors of Center Grove. Those on Matilda Street are particularly vocal about taking action to reduce traffic; a fact that City of Miami District 2 staff shared with us before we had a chance to hear it from the residents themselves.
A real modal filter, even one built as a pilot under Miami-Dade’s “Quick Build” program, would do wonders towards solving these neighbors’ traffic concerns.
Plus, it would be lovely to see a real protected bike lane for the kids which, coincidentally, could provide a relief to the potential traffic increase from the new Allen Morris development next door.
After all, what better reason for traffic calming than to make a neighborhood better, safer, and happier – especially for children.
