Florida
Florida is one of seven jurisdictions participating in the Safe Routes to School state network project (network project), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Florida has been a network state since 2010.
Quick Links
Florida Safe Routes to School State Network
Florida Safe Routes to School State Program
Other Statewide and Regional Programs
Success Stories and Best Practices
E-News Update
Florida Partner Affiliates
Legislation and Policies
Florida Safe Routes to School State Network
The network project's goal is to advance state-level policy reform, resulting in the award and obligation of federal transportation funds, street-scale improvements and joint-use agreements.
The Florida network's action plan can be viewed here.
Florida Safe Routes to School State Program
Managed by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), Florida’s federally-funded Safe Routes to School program is the source for state and district contact details, federal Safe Routes to School funding amounts, Safe Routes to School applications and guidelines, and state Safe Routes to School program information. Florida DOT has a decentralized Safe Routes to School program. Each district safety engineer works with either the district community traffic safety team coordinator or the district bicycle/pedestrian coordinator on non-infrastructure programs. Each district has the choice to solicit new program ideas, work with existing partners on new or expanded Safe Routes to School programs, plan district-wide programs or a combination of these approaches. Florida’s non-infrastructure programs can now be applied for at any time, as long as the district has uncommitted funds.
To see Florida’s Safe Routes to School federal funding to date, look at our State of the States quarterly tracking report.
Application Guidelines
For more information on the steps you need to take to get started, read through the Five Steps to Federal Funding: A Brief Explanation of the Safe Routes to School Program Process. You can find additional resources in our national learning network too.
Since 2005, 198 projects totaling $64,150,653 have been selected for funding in Florida.
Visit the Florida Safe Routes to School program website for more information.
State Advisory Committee
As a large, decentralized agency, FDOT does not have an official Advisory Committee. The State SRTS Coordinator meets as needed with SRTS personnel from the seven districts to discuss all aspects of the SRTS program. The SRTS Coordinator and District personnel also stay in touch by e-mail, phone, video- or tele-conferences, and meetings in the Districts, and work together on any proposed modifications to the state program. The SRTS Network may also make recommendations to improve Florida’s SRTS program. In addition, the Florida DOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Partnership Council was established in April 2010. The Partnership Council provides policy recommendations on the state’s walking, bicycling and trail facilities and programs to the Florida DOT Secretary and transportation partners throughout Florida.
State Outreach Programs
Florida’s SRTS Coordinator works with many statewide agencies and groups that have goals similar to those of the SRTS program. Presentations on the SRTS program are provided at a variety of relevant statewide conferences and meetings, including the Community Traffic Safety Team Coalition. Coordination with the Florida Department of Education occurs to inform each school district about the SRTS program and application opportunities. In addition relevant materials purchased with statewide SRTS funds, such as the Walk Smart and Bike Smart interactive CDs for grades K-3, have been sent to school districts for use in SRTS educational programs. The SRTS Coordinator also works closely with Florida Department of Health on the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) program. Under this program, thirteen regional coordinators work on three health issues, one of which is physical activity, through the formation and support of walking school buses. The Coordinator has served on the Safe Kids Advisory Council under the Florida Department of Health, and continues to work with local Safe Kids Coordinators on various projects.
The Florida Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Resource Center provides educational and promotional items statewide to SRTS and other pedestrian and bicycle programs. The Center is funded primarily with Traffic Safety funds, but additional materials are funded with SRTS funds to help with the implementation of the SRTS program statewide. Statewide SRTS funds have also been used to purchase SRTS educational and promotional items for the seven Districts to distribute to their local programs.
Statewide bids for bicycle racks, covered bicycle racks, bicycle trailers, bicycles, helmets, and promotional items have made it easier for the State SRTS Coordinator, District SRTS contacts or SRTS grant recipients to buy quality, low-cost equipment for SRTS programs. In 2010, using state SRTS funds, a number of bicycle trailers, bicycle sets for training, bike racks, helmets and promotional items were purchased for requesting District and local SRTS programs.
The State SRTS Coordinator and State Safety Engineer were trained in September 2007 to present the SRTS National Course at schools upon request, and they presented the first course to Florida State University Schools in April 2010. Although time and travel constraints have presented challenges to conducting this course, they hope that more courses can be held in the future.
In late 2008, the state SRTS Coordinator began e-mailing regular SRTS Updates, electronic newsletters containing information and web links related to state, national, and international SRTS news and training opportunities. There is so much information on SRTS and related programs, that this newsletter is a big help in keeping everyone abreast of developments and news. These SRTS updates are sent at least once a month to statewide contacts, including the seven Districts, who in turn send them to their local distribution lists. At the District level, the SRTS contacts disseminate information on SRTS through meetings, e-mail and other communications, to make sure that potential applicants and sponsors know about the SRTS program and application opportunities and processes.
Evaluation Methods
Applicants for infrastructure projects are now required to conduct the Student In-Class Travel Tally and report the results in the application and to the National Center for SRTS. In addition, Infrastructure applications require an estimate of how many children currently use the route proposed for improvement, and how many could use the route if the project is implemented. For funded projects, Florida requires before and after data using the National Center for Safe Routes to School’s Student In-Class Travel Tally and Parent Survey.
Other Statewide and Regional Programs
Florida already had two statewide programs that support SRTS, long before the federal SRTS program began. Both of the existing programs have been undergoing transitions and updates. Florida is also working with two new programs which support SRTS, through partnerships with other organizations.
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The Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program (FTBSEP), based at the University of Florida, provides training courses for physical education teachers, as well as other teachers and youth leaders, on how to teach pedestrian and bicycle safety skills in school or other settings. This program is funded by FDOT Human Resource Development (HRD) funds, which pay for the state trainers’ time, travel and expenses. The courses are either free or available at a modest cost if regional trainers conduct or help with the training. Every school represented at a training course receives one curriculum set as part of the training. There is a modest cost for additional curriculum sets for teachers, and for all youth leaders. This program recently completed “Florida’s Safe Routes to School Elementary Traffic Safety Education Guide” which includes an introduction to Safe Routes to School; classroom, on-foot and on-bike lessons; 5th grade activities; adapted lessons for physically challenged students; enrichment activities; and a list of resources. To purchase this Guide and accompanying videos in CD/DVD format, contact the program coordinator, Dan Connaughton. The program also pilot tested the League Certified Instructor-2 Course, a national curriculum/training by the League of American Bicyclists, focusing on education programs for school teachers in pedestrian and bicycle safety education.
In the spring of 2009, Florida DOT’s District One SRTS contact completed a statewide bid for bicycles and bicycle trailers which can be purchased by Districts or SRTS grant recipients. The District provided a trailer, a set of bicycles and training materials to each interested county in the District, resulting in the purchase of twelve sets of equipment. Each trailer is decorated with a mural based on the winning design of a coloring contest, which depicts walking and bicycling bears. The District also hosted a series of FTBSEP train-the-trainer courses throughout southwest Florida, so the counties receiving the equipment would be ready to begin training when the equipment was received. This equipment is very popular and receives a lot of use, while helping to educate Florida’s youth on pedestrian and bicycle safety.
In addition, using state SRTS funds, 10 sets of bicycle trailers and bicycle sets for training, as well as numerous bike racks and helmets were ordered for requesting District and local SRTS programs.
- The Florida School Crossing Guard Training Program, funded through FDOT funds, trains local crossing guard trainers around the state, who in turn train their local crossing guards. There is no cost for the two-day training or the one-day refresher courses. However, hosting agencies usually pay a portion of the travel costs involved. The University of Florida administers this program as well, although the Crossing Guard Administrator is housed in the DOT Safety Office in Tallahassee so she can coordinate closely with the SRTS and Pedestrian/Bicycle Programs. Some overhead costs are absorbed by the Safety Office. Statewide SRTS funds have been used to completely update the Crossing Guard curriculum, to create a Crossing Guard website which can be used for local trainers and the Administrator to communicate, and a data base which is used to document the training of trainers and guards. Work was completed in 2010 on a new training DVD, and work is continuing to develop an online training course. The DVD is broken into short segments for ease of viewing. The online training course will eventually take the place of most of the classroom portion of the training course. Once prospective trainers pass the online course, they will be eligible to attend a one-day course which will consist of review, administrative discussions and practical training which trainers need to train their guards. Florida’s Crossing Guard Training Program was the first (and to date the only) statewide training course of its type in the U.S. See the public portions of the website and the Guidelines at: http://www.dot.state.fl.us/safety/ped_bike/training/ped_bike_training.shtm
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In February 2010, Florida Department of Health received Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) funding to work on physical activity (walking school buses), nutrition (breast feeding) and tobacco cessation programs around Florida. Thirteen full-time regional coordinators located throughout Florida are spending a third of their time creating and supporting Walking School Buses, working with District and local SRTS contacts, Safe Kids Coalitions and other appropriate personnel and volunteers to implement this new program. Coordinators are also working with school districts and individual schools to encourage them to adopt policies which support Walking School Buses and SRTS programs. To learn more about this project, visit http://www.doh.state.fl.us/family/chronicdisease/CPPW or contact Emily Fritz at: Emily_Fritz@doh.state.fl.us or (850) 245-4444, ext. 3305.
Two additional CPPW Projects focusing efforts on walking and bicycling to school as ways to prevent obesity, increase physical activity and promote safety were recently funded. These projects are in Pinellas County/St. Petersburg, FL and Miami/Dade County.
As previously mentioned, Florida has created a SRTS Network which is broadening and deepening support for SRTS around Florida. This Network has further increased communications on SRTS in Florida, and Network members are working to improve policies which support SRTS in Florida.
Success Stories and Best Practices
If you would like to submit a success story for consideration, please email it to Kathy Cooke.
Miami-Dade County, FL
The Miami-Dade County school board in Florida mandates that all students in the school system receive pedestrian education through the WalkSafe program. As part of the program, the WalkSafe organization also collects incident reports from elementary schools to identify traffic and built environment dangers. Teaching children pedestrian safety and making needed infrastructure improvements around schools has resulted in notable pedestrian safety improvements. In 2010, a companion BikeSafe program was piloted in Miami-Dade County, and this program is being expanded. Careful, ongoing data collection has shown that there has been a 43 percent decrease in the total number of children ages 0-14 hit by cars in Miami-Dade County since 2001. Local initiatives in Miami-Dade County such as WalkSafe and BikeSafe were supported by national NHTSA and FHWA grants to implement a number of countermeasures covering all of the E’s, in this successful effort to lower pedestrian injuries and fatalities in Miami-Dade County.
Volusia and Flagler Counties, Florida: Expanding Safety Education
The Volusia County School District in Florida used non-infrastructure funding to train Volusia and Flagler County teachers using the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education program. This training expanded the program to a total of seven elementary schools in Volusia and trained four new physical education teachers from Flagler County. This county partnership worked well, since Flagler County is a small county, which would have received only a small amount of funding if they had received stand-alone funding for a SRTS project.
Contact:
Cookie Grafton
ggrafton@volusia.k12.fl.us
(386) 322-6100
Students Commit 2B Fit® through Safe Routes to School
A Safe Routes to School grant helped students in Broward County, Florida expand their Bicycle Safety Program and learn that safe walking and biking to school can be an excellent form of physical activity. Commit 2B Fit®, an award winning physical activity and nutrition program was integrated into the Bicycle Safety training program with the use of the Commit 2B Fit® Walk Safe – Bike Safe Youth Journal. This journal is filled with safe walking and bicycling tips and information along with fitness and nutrition journaling that provides a complete experience for the user. The parents of each student involved in this project also received a Commit 2B Fit® Adult Journal so they could participate with their children in this walking and bicycling activity.
As the students learned about walking and bicycle safety, they logged their daily nutrition and physical activity goals in their Commit 2B Fit® journal. In the journal, the students take a pledge to Commit 2B Fit and when they do, they receive a special Walk Safe – Bike Safe affirmation charm that reminds them to choose walking and biking as an activity of choice. The students proudly wore the charm and necklace to show everyone of their commitment to walk and bicycle safely for physical activity.
Approximately ten times a year, Commit 2B Fit® places educational brochures in highly visible kiosks in Publix Supermarkets. With this project, two months of brochures with bicycle/walking safety information was placed in all Publix locations in Broward County as part of parent and community education.
To learn more about this project, please contact Elly Zanin, Co-Founder of Commit 2B Fit, Inc. at elly@icommit2bfit.com or call 561-271-3807. You may also visit the website at www.icommit2bfit.com.
E-News Update
Florida was featured in the National Partnership’s E-News in March of 2011. Click here to read the full article.
Florida Partner Affiliates
Find out which organizations in your state have pledged their support for the Safe Routes to School movement.
Legislation and Policies
State Physical Education Requirements
In 2007, a law was passed requiring 150 minutes a week (or 30 minutes a day) of Physical Education for K-5th graders, and encouraging 225 minutes of PE a week (or 45 minutes a day) for 6-8th graders. This law is making it a little easier for the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program to be implemented during school hours so that more children will have the safe walking and bicycling skills needed to make SRTS programs successful.
Also supportive of the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program are the following Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (benchmarks) for pedestrian and bicycle skills, which were adopted in 2010 for physical education classes in Kindergarten through Grade 5 in Florida (s. 1003.41, F.S. –“Next Generation” Sunshine State Standards for Physical Education):
- K: Verbally state the search "look left, look right, look left again" used before crossing a roadway.
- 1: Identify edges, pedestrians, vehicles and traffic.
- 2: Identify the proper crossing sequence.
- 3: Differentiate between the correct and incorrect way to fit a bicycle helmet.
- 4: Discuss the importance of wearing a bicycle helmet.
- 5: Discus the importance of being visible, being predictable and communicating when cycling.
Wellness Policies
School wellness policies are required to be developed by each School District and updated annually per Florida Statute 1003.453. Many of these policies also support SRTS programs. The CPPW Coordinators are working with school districts and individual schools to encourage them to adopt policies supportive of walking and biking to school. The Florida Department of Education has included links to SRTS resources and model policies on their webpage - http://www.fldoe.org/FNM/wellness/tools.asp. For more information on Florida School Wellness Policies, go to: http://www.freshfromflorida.com/divisions/fnw/.
Safe Paths to Schools Program – Section 335.066, Florida Statutes
(1) There is established in the Department of Transportation the Safe Paths to Schools Program to consider the planning and construction of bicycle and pedestrian ways to provide Safe transportation for children from neighborhoods to schools, parks, and the state’s greenways and trails system.
This law was passed before the federal SRTS program was created, but the state program was not funded. FDOT Districts were instructed to work to meet the intent of the law using existing funding.
Conserve by Bicycle Program – Section 335.067, Florida Statutes
There is created within the Department of Transportation the Conserve by Bicycle Program.
(1) The purposes of the Conserve by Bicycle Program are to:
(a) Save energy by increasing the number of miles ridden on bicycles, thereby reducing the usage of petroleum-based fuels.
(b) Increase efficiency of cycling as a transportation mode by improving interconnectivity.
(c) Reduce traffic congestion on existing roads.
(d) Provide recreational opportunities for Florida residents and visitors.
(e) Provide healthy alternatives to help reduce the trend toward obesity and reduce long-term health costs.
(f) Provide Safe ways for children to travel from their homes to their schools by supporting the Safe Paths to Schools Program.Two research projects focusing on conserving by bicycle and pedestrian were done. These reports are posted at: Conserve by Bicycle Phase 1 Study and Conserve by Bicycle Phase 2 Study.
School Siting & Planning Coordination
Section 163.3177, Florida Statutes - Required and optional elements of comprehensive plan
- school siting in land use plans
Section 1013.33 , Florida Statutes - Coordination of planning with local governing bodies
Section 1013.36 , Florida Statutes - Site planning and selection
Section 1013.51 , Florida Statutes - Expenditures authorized for certain infrastructure
Rule 6A-2.0010, Florida Administrative Code (FAC) –State Requirements for Educational Factilities
- incorporates AASHTO and FDOT manuals by reference
- Guidelines
Section 423, Florida Building Code
- site design
School Transportation
Sections 1006.21-.27, Florida Statutes - Transportation of Public K-12 Students
- school transportation requirements, especially school buses and operations
Section 1012.45, Florida Statutes - School bus driver requirements
- School bus operator training, licensure, and qualifications
- Student eligibility for service and state funding
- Safety instruction for parents and students. Example: “Are We There Yet?” flyer
School Safety
Section 1006.147, Florida Statutes - Prohibits bullying and harassment of any student or employee:
- school educational program or activity;
- any school-related or school-sponsored program or activity;
- school bus; or
- school computer system
Safe Neighborhoods Program -- Section 163.517, Florida Statutes
- The Safe Neighborhoods Program is hereby created. The purpose of the program shall be to provide planning grants and technical assistance on a 100-percent matching basis to the neighborhood improvement districts authorized by this part. Planning grants shall be awarded to eligible applicants, pursuant to the process described in subsections (2) and (3), as follows:
- Property owners’ association neighborhood improvement districts may receive up to $20,000.
- Local government neighborhood improvement districts may receive up to $100,000.
- Special neighborhood improvement districts may receive up to $50,000.
- Community redevelopment neighborhood improvement districts may receive up to $50,000.
- Applications for planning grants from the Safe Neighborhoods Program shall be considered when the following criteria are met:
- Verification that the local governing body has passed an ordinance creating neighborhood improvement districts.
- Verification of commitment to provide matching funds for purposes of planning for neighborhood improvement districts. A local match may include in-kind services such as office space and supplies. The fair market value of such in-kind services must be documented.
- All applications determined to be eligible for consideration shall be reviewed, evaluated, and rank ordered based on the following criteria:
- Evidence of commitment from neighborhood organizations, homeowners, property owners, business or merchant’s associations, or concerned individuals to participate in the activities of their neighborhood improvement districts.
- Need of the community for neighborhood improvement districts for purposes of reducing crime, including the degree to which crime data indicates an escalation of criminal activities which impact area physical and economic conditions, identification of environmental factors which support criminal activities, previous crime prevention plans and efforts which impact the physical environment, excessive traffic counts for residential roads, and crime rates in enterprise zones and in business and commercial areas.
- Need of the community for state planning funds to successfully implement neighborhood improvement districts, including consideration of the community’s existing planning, law enforcement, and other appropriate local services and resources.
- Population distribution of Florida’s cities and counties shall be considered in order to give communities of all sizes an opportunity to benefit from the matching funds provided by the Safe Neighborhoods Program for the establishment of neighborhood improvement districts. No more than one neighborhood improvement district within the boundaries of a local government shall be awarded a planning grant in any given funding cycle.
- Each neighborhood improvement district which receives funds under this section shall submit an audit to the department. Such audits shall be submitted no less than one time per year. Neighborhood improvement districts must submit an audit to the department at least 30 days prior to making application for additional planning grants. A local government audit performed in accordance with the provisions of chapter 218, covering the period of the grant, may be submitted to satisfy this requirement.