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.
Released in 2014 by Smart Growth America, Measuring Sprawl 2014 examines how some places in the United States are sprawling out and some places are building in compact, connected ways.
The Greater Washington communities in Virginia gained four new Safe Routes to School coordinators in the last round of Virginia Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School funding!
The guide is intended to provide examples of noteworthy SRTS program practices and managementapproaches. The guide was completed in partnership with the National Center for Safe Routes to School(National Center) with funding from the FHWA SRTS program.
Last week, while visiting the doctor for flu-like symptoms, Safe Routes Partnership director Deb Hubsmith was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). This type of leukemia comes on very quickly, and Deb's doctors caught it early and started treatment right away. She will be in and out of the hospital over the next couple of months while going through chemotherapy. Once treated, AML has a good remission and survival rate. Her doctors fully expect remission following her treatment course.
This report provides an introduction to different types of walking facilities that can be constructedin rural areas. It includes case studies of a number of communities building creative and cost-effective walking facilities.
Ready to act? Contact your members of Congress now. Want more background? Keep reading...
This resource provides tips for a student audience about bike safety.
This South Providence Elementary School Had a Chronic Absenteeism Problem. Then They Started a Walking School Bus.
At first, the maps didn’t make sense. Why would the kids who lived closest to school – all within one mile – have the most problems with chronic absenteeism?
These briefings sheets were developed with funding support from the National Center for Safe Routes to School. The briefing sheets are intended for use by transportation engineers and planners to support their active participation in the development and implementation of Safe Routes to School programs and activities.
The deadline to prevent the Highway Trust Fund from becoming insolvent is rapidly approaching, leaving Congress and the Administration with just months to identify a solution. But will they be up to the task? The stakes for Congress couldn’t be higher, with a failure to act putting hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk and bringing thousands of construction projects,
This report describes relationships between transportation policies and plans and health and potential to implement policies that make transportation more healthy, green, safe, accessible and affordable.
The technologies drawing attention are user-centric that allow both users and providers to interact and share information about the transportation network. Active transportation and Safe Routes to Schools advocates should care about these trends because they are expanding transportation options, promoting active lifestyles and tipping the political scales towards multi-modalism in planning and implementation.The digital space is using the influx of information (i.e. big data) to find patterns and efficiencies in the transportation system. These mobile and web applications are facilitating supportive programs and policies for walking, bicycling and Safe Routes to School, even when active transportation is not the immediate focus of mobile and web applications. Safe Routes to School supporters will be able to better partner with transportation agencies, organizations and advocates, if they stay alert to the culture changes that technology is causing within transportation.
First, I posit that ride and car-sharing services will bolster walkable and bikeable communities. I see many ways that students and families will be supported and encouraged to be car-free or car-limited with more reliable alternative networks, such as ride and car-share, cross jurisdictional bicycle and pedestrian networks and public transportation. Ridesharing mobile applications like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are booming and flipped the script on taxi and car services and local job creation. Users of ride share applications can name their price for trips with Lyft and benefit (or suffer) with surge pricing with Uber. Potentially communities benefits in the strengthening of ride and car-share through crowdsourcing affordability and flexibility. Paratransit riders - usually the elderly and persons with disability - are also frequent users of ride-shares. Additionally, car sharing companies like Zipcar allow drivers to rent a car by the hour, where prices include insurance and maintenance. Personally, I know families that would benefit from having better access to alternative networks to get children to school and after-school activities. One family in particular was forced to give up their car free lifestyle when the local Zipcar location was closed. These technologies are means to fill in the transportation gaps for communities and families.
Transportation for America wrote the report to highligh strategies and investment opportunities to preventable pedestrian deaths.
Today, the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee released their draft bill reauthorizing MAP-21, which would fund our nation’s surface transportation programs for an additional six years.
This research synthesis examines studies indicating that racial and ethnic minorities and lower-income people live in communities that do not provide as many built and social environmental supports for physical activity and are not as supportive of physical activity.
In Los Angeles County, two years collaborative efforts to make sure the County’s transportation investments add up to create a truly multimodal system are at a critical juncture!
This policy statement highlights how the built environment of a community affects children’s opportunities for physical activity. Neighborhoods and communities can provide opportunities for recreational physical activity with parks and open spaces, and policies must support this capacity.
"It is just not safe to let my child walk or ride their bike to school." So said respondents from the initial survey that the PTA of Linwood Elementary in Milwaukie, Oregon, sent out last spring. They didn’t know that 'Safe Routes to School' – with capital letters – existed. But they knew something was not right, and they wanted to fix it.
More than 100 jurisdictions at the state, local, and regional levels have adopted Complete Streets policies. NPLAN has surveyed existing law, conducted extensive legal research, and consulted with legal and policy experts to create these model laws for Complete Streets.