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When Deb Hubsmith founded the Safe Routes Partnership in 2005 – the same year that the first federal Safe Routes to School legislation was passed, authorizing funding to 50 states and the District of Columbia – her vision for the Safe Routes to School movement was much broader than the $612 million in initial funding outlined in the legislation. From the very beginning, Hubsmith believed that Safe Routes to School had the potential to transform our cities and towns into healthy, active communities where all people can walk, bicycle, and be physically active.

On September 17^th, the U.S. House Transportation Committee will be voting on the transportation bill.  One of the issues they’ll be debating is whether or not to continue the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP), which is the main source of funding for Safe Routes to School, bicycling and walking. 

As many of you know, it’s award season! From the Golden Globes to the Screen Actor's Guild Awards and all the way to the Oscars… there are nominees and winners. Here at the Safe Routes Partnership we wanted in on the award season action. For the past year, the National Shared Use Task Force has been engaging in conversations about ways that we could recognize all of the great work that is happening across the country in the shared use field.

Sara Zimmerman is program and policy director at the Safe Routes Partnership.

Click here to see the Storify highlights from the #MoveEquity Tweetchat on ending street harassment to get more kids walking and biking.

The majority of Americans live in urban or suburban areas, though around 15 percent of Americans live in nonmetropolitan regions, which make up 72 percent of US land. Although the proportion of Americans who are rural residents has recently declined, these communities still comprise 46.1 million Americans (USDA, 2015). When it comes to health outcomes, researchers have identified inequities in rural areas, including higher rates of obesity compared with urban residents and differing levels of physical activity by geographic region (Yousefian et al., 2009; Hansen and Harley, 2015).

Back in May, we asked you to take action against the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) proposed “system performance measures” that would have measured the speed of cars and trucks in seven different ways, while devoting no measures at all to people walking, bicycling, and taking transit. 

Fired Up! That’s the best way I can describe the energy on the first day of the 3rd Safe Routes to School National Conference, which is being held at the Minneapolis Convention Center. About 600 people from nearly every state in the US came here seeking to learn, share and build connections so that they can go home with new tools to improve their communities, making them safer for kids to walk and bike – improving health, communities and the environment.

With Congress in recess this week, we have a short breather. So I’m taking this opportunity to bring you up to speed on where things stand on the transportation bill. The past three weeks have been action-packed—and there’s more to come next week and beyond.

Hi, my name is Kathy Cooke, and I'm network coordinator for the Safe Routes Partnership! Even though I battle daily to get my two sons to put on a jacket or long pants during Portland's rainier months, I've found ways to make sure other "systems" are in place that help them get safely to and from school. We have tools at the ready to fix their bike brakes or pump air in their tires.

Please note that the Request to Host for the 2013 Safe Routes to School National Conference was not released on April 16 as stated below. Stay tuned as we will send it out as soon as possible!

As I learn more about the communities in the Greater Washington, DC region, I am learning about the unique approaches and challenges to increasing walking and bicycling in each community. For example, some schools do not allow kids to walk or bicycle to school.

From Bicycling Magazine to NPR's Talk of the Nation, the topic of Safe Routes to School is in the headings and creating a national conversation!

For the past two weeks veteran and budding bicyclists around the country have been peddling the joys of pedaling by participating in the National Bike Challenge , National Bike

A Matter of the “Heart”

Hi! Welcome to my blog.

After several weeks of reports that Congressional conferees on the transportation bill were making progress, last week saw a flurry of news stories in the Capitol Hill trade press that negotiations are on the rocks. House Republicans from the Transpor