For years, public health and community transportation planning worked together like kids at an sixth grade dance: boys on one side, girls on the other. They see each other, but there’s not much, if any, mingling.

When I came to the Safe Routes Partnership more than a year and a half ago, I was encouraged by our founder Deb Hubsmith to do two things. First, find every way to raise the drum beat of equity in my work, and second, read profusely to gain best practices and tactics to push progress forward. 

Just in time for International Walk to School Day, a new study has been published in the Journal of the American Planning Association that confirms what those of us in the field have long known:  Safe Routes to School programs are effective at increasing rates of walking and bicycling to and from school.<