Resource Library

Around the country, more than 600 communities and states have adopted local Complete Streets policies—helping ensure that transportation plans and projects address the needs of all users.

Last fall, in the rural community of Winton, California, there was lot of excitement building around walking, bicycling and Safe Routes to School. Winton is a small town with two schools less than two miles apart from each other, and parents and community members had been frustrated about the congestion that was created when schools released students at the end of the day. Parents wanted to be able to walk or bicycle to school with their children, but couldn’t because of a lack of sidewalks and infrastructure. The district needed a solution.

Richard Louv coined the term “nature-deficit disorder,” in his award winning book Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. He recounts how children are spending progressively less time outdoors in free, unstructured play, and how wide-ranging the negative repercussions might be as children disconnect from the natural world.  

Recently, staff and elected leaders of nine municipalities from Prince George’s County attended a National Complete Streets Coalition workshop to learn more about the steps needed to write, adopt, and implement an effective Complete Streets policy.

In August, almost $220 million in walking and bicycling grants will be awarded to communities across California through the state’s new Active Transportation Program (ATP).  In a hard-won victory by the Safe Routes Partnership’s state network in California, at least $72 million of that total will fund Safe Routes to School projects and programs.

Throughout my entire life I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world. I found my niche in the late 1990s with Safe Routes to School and never looked back.

If you have been paying attention to how Congress has handled transportation over the past several years, you’d be justified in thinking that this May’s expiration of the MAP-21 transportation law will get pushed back by months and that you don’t need to pay attention to transportation this spring.

By Katharine Bierce, Sara Zimmerman, and Norma Tassy

This guest blog post was written by our research adviser, Christina Galardi.

Back to the basics: even though I’ve completed college-level mathematics courses, this month I returned to elementary school for an important lesson in my 1,2,3’s.