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Quick Facts

Safe Routes to School (SRTS) is a national and international movement to create safe, convenient, and fun opportunities for children to bicycle and walk to and from schools. The program has been designed to reverse the decline in children walking and bicycling to schools. Safe Routes to School can also play a critical role in reversing the alarming nationwide trend toward childhood obesity and inactivity.

In 2005, through the federal transportation bill SAFETEA-LU Congress allocated $612 million for five years of Safe Routes to School for funding Safe Routes to School programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.   Funds are administered by the State Departments of Transportation and are provided to local cities, counties, schools and non-profits for infrastructure (engineering) and non-infrastructure (promotion, education and enforcement).  As of November 2009, 73% of the federal SRTS funds had already been awarded.

Health and Obesity:  Children today are simply not getting enough physical activity, contributing to growing rates of obesity and obesity-related health problems, such as diabetes.  Safe Routes to School projects make it safer for more children to walk and bicycle to school, which will help address this obesity crisis among children by creating increases in physical activity.

• Walking one mile to and from school each day is two-thirds of the recommended sixty minutes of physical activity a day.  Children who walk to school have higher levels of physical activity throughout the day 1 2 and higher levels of cardiovascular fitness.3
• Numerous studies document that Safe Routes to School education and promotion activities encourage more children to walk and bicycle to school,  and that infrastructure improvements increase walking and bicycling to school and decrease driving to school.4
• Over the past 40 years, rates of obesity have soared among children of all ages in the United States, and approximately 25 million children and adolescents—more than 33%—are now overweight or obese or at risk of becoming so.5
• Kids are less active today, and 23% of children get no free time physical activity at all.6
• The prevalence of obesity is so great that today’s generation of children may be the first in over 200 years to live less healthy and have a shorter lifespan than their parents.7
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that obesity cost America $147 billion in the year 2000, and physical inactivity results in $76 billion in direct medical costs annually.8 People living in auto-oriented suburbs drive more, walk less, and are more obese than people living in walkable communities.  For each hour of driving per day, obesity increases 6 percent, but walking for transportation reduces the risk of obesity.9

Transportation and Traffic Congestion:  Neighborhoods are becoming increasingly clogged by traffic.  By boosting the number of children walking and bicycling, Safe Routes to School projects reduce traffic congestion.

• Within the span of one generation, the percentage of children walking or bicycling to school has dropped precipitously, from approximately 50% in 196910 to just 15% in 2001.11
• While distance to school is the most commonly reported barrier to walking and bicycling12, private vehicles still account for half of school trips between 1/4 and 1/2 mile13—a distance easily covered on foot or bike.
• As much as 20 to 30% of morning traffic is generated by parents driving their children to schools.14
• A California study showed that schools that received infrastructure improvements through the Safe Routes to School program yielded walking and bicycling increases in the range of 20 to 200 percent.15

Safety:  Safe Routes to School projects focus on infrastructure improvements, traffic education for students, and driver enforcement that provide positive impacts on the safety of children, many of whom already walk or bicycle to school in unsafe conditions.

• Half of children struck by cars near schools are hit by parents driving other children to school.16
• Approximately 23,000 children age 14 and under were injured and 429 were killed while walking or bicycling in the United States in 2006.17
• Thirty percent of traffic deaths for children ages 0-14 happen when children are walking and bicycling.18
• Children walking and bicycling to school represent 11% of injuries and 24% of fatalities during the school commute, but just 14% of trips and less than 2% of miles traveled.19
• A safety analysis by the California Department of Transportation estimated that the safety benefit of the SRTS was up to a 49 percent decrease in the childhood bicycle and pedestrian collision rates.20
• At least 70% of Safe Routes to School funding is to be used for infrastructure improvements, which can have dramatic effects on safety.  For example, pedestrians are half as likely to be struck by a car in locations with sidewalks. 21

Environment:  Safe Routes to School projects increase the number of children walking and bicycling to school, which also cuts down on the number of cars.  As cars emit pollutants for each mile traveled, reducing traffic can improve the quality of air that children breathe in and around their schools.

• Children exposed to traffic pollution are more likely to have asthma, permanent lung deficits, and a higher risk of heart and lung problems as adults. 22
• Over the last 25 years, among children ages 5 to 14, there has been a 74 percent increase in asthma cases.23 In addition, 14 million days of school are missed every year due to asthma.24
• One-third of schools in “air pollution danger zones.”25
• Schools that are designed so children can walk and bicycle have measurably better air quality. 26
• A 5% increase in a neighborhood’s “walkability” reduces vehicle miles traveled by 6%.27
• Returning to 1969 levels of walking and bicycling to school28 would save 3.2 billion vehicle miles, 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide and 89,000 tons of other pollutants29—equal to keeping more than 250,000 cars off the road for a year.

If you have any questions, or need more information, please contact:
Deb Hubsmith, director
Email: deb@saferoutespartnership.org
Phone: 415/454-7430
Website: www.saferoutespartnership.org   

End Notes

1 Alexander et al., "The broader impact of walking to school among adolescents." BMJonline.

2 Cooper et al., "Commuting to school: Are children who walk more physically active?" Amer Journal of Preventative Medicine 2003: 25 (4)

3  Davison K, Werder J, and Lawson C. “Children’s Active  Commuting to School: Current Knowledge and Future Directions.” Preventing Chronic Disease 5(3): A100, July 2008.

4  Active Living Research. “Research Brief: Active Transportation, Making the Link from Transportation to Physical Activity and Obesity,”  Summer 2009.  Available at http://www.activelivingresearch.org/files/ALR_Brief_ActiveTransportation.pdf.

5 Ogden, C.L. et al., “Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity in the United States, 1999-2004.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 295, no. 13 (2006).  Available at http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/13/1549#JOC60036T2.  

6 “Physical activity levels among children aged 9-13 years—United States, 2002.”  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2003; 52[33]:785-8. 

7 S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., Douglas J. Passaro, M.D., Ronald C. Hershow, M.D., Jennifer Layden, M.P.H., Bruce A. Carnes, Ph.D., Jacob Brody, M.D., Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D., Robert N. Butler, M.D., David B. Allison, Ph.D., and David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D.,  “A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century,” New England Journal of Medicine: Volume 352: 1138-1145, March 17, 2005. 

8 Cohen, Joel W., Dietz, William, Finkelstein, Eric A., Trogdon, Justin G. Annual Medical Spending Attributable To Obesity: Payer-And Service-Specific Estimates. Health Affairs, 28, no. 5, July 2009.  Available at http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/short/hlthaff.28.5.w822.

9 Frank LD, Andresen MA, Schmid TL. “Obesity relationships with community design, physical activity, and time spent in cars.”  American Journal of Preventative Medicine 2004; 27: 87-96.

10 Transportation Characteristics of School Children, Report No. 4.  Washington, DC:  Nationwide Personal Transportation Study, Federal Highway Administration, July 1972.

11 “Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting.”  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 231-R-03-004: 2, 2003.  Available at www.epa.gov/livability/school_travel.htm.

12 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report September 30, 2005, “Barriers to Children Walking to or from School, United States 2004.” Available at www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5438a2.htm.

13 Federal Highway Administration, National Household Travel Survey 2001; NHTS Brief on Travel to School, January 2008.

14 Dubay A. “See Dick and Jane Sit in Traffic,” The Press Democrat, September 7, 2003 cited in Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting.  US Environmental Protection Agency EPA 231-R-03-004. October 2003.  Available at www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/pdf/school_travel.pdf.

15 Marla R. Orenstein, Nicolas Gutierrez, Thomas M. Rice, Jill F. Cooper, and David R. Ragland, "Safe Routes to School Safety and Mobility Analysis" (April 1, 2007). UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center. Paper UCB-TSC-RR-2007-1. http://repositories.cdlib.org/its/tsc/UCB-TSC-RR-2007-1.

16 Washington State Department of Transportation; cited in Safe Routes to School, National Highway Transportation & Safety Administration, 2002.

17 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, Traffic Safety Fact Sheets 2006, Children. Available at www.nhtsa.gov/portal/site/nhtsa/menuitem.6a6eaf83cf719ad24ec86e10dba046a0/.

18 Borse, N, et al., CDC Childhood Injury Report.  Patterns of Unintentional Injuries among 0-19 Year Olds in the United States, 2000-2006, December 2008.  Available at http://www.cdc.gov/SafeChild/images/CDC-ChildhoodInjury.pdf.

19 Transportation Research Board.  The Relative Risks of School Travel:  A National Perspective and Guidance for Local Community Risk Assessment, 2002.  Available at http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr269.pdf.

20 Marla Orenstein, Nicolas Gutierrez, Thomas Rice, Jill Cooper, and David Ragland, "Safe Routes to School Safety and Mobility Analysis" (April 1, 2007). UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center. Paper UCB-TSC-RR-2007-1. http://repositories.cdlib.org/its/tsc/UCB-TSC-RR-2007-1.

21 Knoblauch, R., Tustin, BH., Smith, SA., and Pietrucha, MT.  Investigation of Exposure-Based Pedestrian Accident Areas: Crosswalks, Sidewalks, Local Streets, and Major Arterials.  Washington DC: US Dept of Transportation; 1987.

22 Gauderman, W. J., E. Avol, F. Lurmann, N. Kuenzli, F. Gilliland, J. Peters and R. McConnell, “Childhood Asthma and Exposure to Traffic and Nitrogen Dioxide,” Epidemiology, Volume 16, No. 6, November 2005. AND Gauderman, W.J., H. Vora, R. McConnell, K. Berhane, F. Gilliland, D. Thomas, F. Lurmann, E. Avol, N. Kunzli, M. Jerrett, and J. Peters, “Effect of exposure to traffic on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age: a cohort study,” The Lancet, Volume 368, February 2007.

23 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Surveillance for Asthma—United States, 1960-1995: CDC Surveillance Summaries, April 24, 1998. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 47 (SS-1), 1998, pp. 1-27.

24 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Healthy Youth! Health Topics: Asthma.  Available at http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/asthma/index.htm.

25 Appatova, A. S., Ryan, P., LeMasters, G., Grinshpun, S.  “Proximal exposure of public schools and students to major roadways: a nationwide US survey,” Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Volume 51, Issue 5, 2008.

26 US EPA. Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting, October 2003.  Available at www.smartgrowth.umd.edu/pdf/SchoolLocationReport.pdf.

27 Lawrence D. Frank, James F. Sallis, et al. "Many Pathways from Land Use to Health" Journal of the American Planning Association, Volume 72, Issue 1, Winter 2006.

28 McDonald, N.  “Active Transportation to School:  Trends among U.S. Schoolchildren, 1969-2001,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 32, Number 6, June 2007.

29 “Emission Facts: Average Annual Emissions and Fuel Consumption for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks,” U.S Environmental Protection Agency.  Available at http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/f00013.htm.