The first weekend of December, I joined 18 fellow citizens at the National Capital Transportation Planning Board (TPB) Community Leadership Institute (CLI). The purpose of the CLI is to learn more about how transportation decisions are made in the region and how to become more involved in the decision-making process.
This website provides a list of different audits for various settings and environmental attributes. The general purpose of an audit is to identify concerns for pedestrians and bicyclists related to the safety, access, comfort, and convenience of the environment.
Since it has been a full six months since MAP-21 was signed into law, we are now seeing progress and decisions on the implementation of the law.
As the project progresses, it will offer more precise benchmarks and recommendations for advocates and government officials so that they have the data they need to improve bicycling and walking in the United States and eventually all of North America.
Did you make a new years resolution in 2013 to be more physically active? How about to lose weight? Spend more time with your kids? Or do you want to get more involved with your community?
If any one of these represent your goals, I’ve got one word for you – WALK.
This is it!
Can you feel the momentum building for getting kids active in schools? Can you feel the walking movement growing? Can you hear the call to action to ensure our communities are designed to help people move?
We are ready to seize the moment. Are you ready to join us?
These PowerPoint slides summarize MAP-21, its impact on transportation funding, and opportunities for supporting walking/biking projects.
Use the extra energy and daylight of this springtime of year to help more children walk, hop, skip or bicycle to school. The Active Living Research annual conference, held in February 2013, highlighted research relevant to Safe Routes to School that can help you show the proven benefits of your program.
Two of the session presentations are highlighted below:
School districts that adopt school bicycling or walking policies ensure that transportation safety rules for the district are consistent and standardized. Policies developed at this jurisdictional level can also help lay the groundwork for better and safer behaviors. This document provides a model school walking policy.
One of the most important and basic lessons we all learn is how to share. As children we are taught to share our toys and time on the swings, as employees we are encouraged to share ideas and successes, and as bicyclists we request that cars share the road.
According to CSBA’s research with school governance teams in California, schoolboard members recognize the link between student health and academicachievement, but when faced with a multitude of competing priorities and limitedresources, are hard pressed to make wellness a high priority in the district/COE.
I was 12 years old and it started out as just another spring weekend with my Dad in New York City in the 1980s.
The second annual Tennessee Bike Summit took place during May in Memphis, Tennessee. I had the pleasure of attending with a few hundred others from all across the volunteer state, who support bicycling as a form of transportation and recreation.
The Safe Routes Partnership is implementing the State Network Project to ensure program success and leverage resources by creating SRTS State Networks in nine states and the District of Columbia. The following report outlines how State Networks can create policy change.
This spring, families and schools across the country joined in the Fire Up Your Feet activity challenge, a program designed to encourage students, families, and school staff to walk, bike, and get physical activity in daily life. Together, families and schools logged a collective 292,400 minutes of activity and more than 7,000 miles.
This webinar from January 16, 2014 discusses basic liability concepts and then delves into issues related to walking school buses, remote drop offs and bike trains.
In June, articles in the Akron Beacon Journal highlighted the safety inequity between urban and suburban students that walk or bike to school (you can read them here and
The new transportation law, MAP-21, gives Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) moreresponsibility for distributing federal transportation funds. MPOs serving areas with more than200,000 residents are required to run a competitive grant program to distribute federal funds fromthe Transportation Alternatives (TA) program.
In less than a week, the fourth Safe Routes to School National Conference will kick off in Sacramento, California. Since 2007, the biannual National Conference has brought Safe Routes to School champions together to share success stories, learn from one another and chart the course for the future.
A March 2012 research brief by Active Living Research, Impact of the Walking School Bus Program on Children’s Pedestrian Safety Behaviors, reported that parents listed their children’s safety as one of the top concerns regarding walking to school, and that improving safety may lead more parents to allow their children to walk to school.