The United Way of Central Alabama started work on Safe Routes to School as part of a pilot where community members identified student safety and walkability high on their list of priorities. After funding in 2012 through RWJF Healthy Kids Healthy Communities and the CDC Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiatives, they rolled out a walking school bus program and support other bicycle and pedestrian education and advocacy efforts.

After waiting until nearly halfway through FY2018 to set spending levels, Congress is out of the gate quickly on the FY19 appropriations process.  The process of setting spending levels is easier this year, because the FY18 spending package included a two-year agreement on funding levels that were significantly more generous than what the Trump administration had proposed.  As an example, the transportation-housing spending max spending level for FY19 is more than $1 billion higher than the FY18 cap, w

The US Department of Transportation has announced that the long-standing TIGER program, in which USDOT awards up to $25 million apiece to multimodal transportation projects across the country, has been renamed the BUILD program. The renaming of TIGER signals USDOT’s intention to put the Trump administration’s stamp on it.

Six months into fiscal year 2018, Congress has finally set spending levels for federal agencies and programs.  The $1.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill includes great news for many programs for which the Trump administration proposed elimination or significant cuts.

This post was authored by Tiffany Lam

Safe Routes to School in Columbus, Ohio started in the mid-2000s as a cooperative effort that spoke to public health, the Department of Public Services, and the Safe Walks program, involving Safe Routes to School travel plans for a school or a group of a few schools. These efforts brought about mobility studies for a few different neighborhoods. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) funded SRTS projects at individual schools, but they were also receiving a lot of applications for larger school districts.

Newton, MA's Safe Routes to School program has made many gains since they started roughly ten years ago. Examples are across the board! Not only have they identified more local champions who work with individual schools, but they are also poised to announce a new working school transportation policy developed by an after school committee. The current policy has more of a focus on who qualifies for the bus, and they’ve been asked to develop a policy that promotes walking, biking and taking the bus.

This post was written by research adviser Tiffany Lam.