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.
In 1935, as part of the New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration moved 203 Midwestern families from their economically depressed farms to form the Matanuska Colony in what is now Palmer, Alaska. These agricultural families migrated from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, approximately 45 miles north of Anchorage, 24 years before Alaska became a state. With 40 acres allocated per family, these farming colonists cultivated the land into what is now the heart of Alaska’s agricultural production.
The Safe Routes Partnership and the YMCA of the USA recently released Making Strides: 2016 State Report Cards on Support for Walking, Bicycling, Active Kids and Communities. These report cards have an entire section devoted to state funding for Safe Routes to School, bicycling and walking that provides important information for advocates.
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).
Look both ways. Wear your helmet. We’ve all heard these maxims about safety, and probably shared them a time or two.
Aside from distance to school, safety is a leading factor for both adults and children in the decision to participate in physical activity and walk or bike to school (Nasar, 2015; Zhou et al., 2009). However, adopting those individual protective behaviors will not provide an easy solution. This blog post will unpack three reasons why the concept of safety, particularly in the context of safe travel to school, can be challenging to conceptualize and achieve.
This blog post was written by our research advisor, Christina Galardi.
As Safe Routes to School practitioners, schools, parents, and community partners work together to make it easier and safer for kids to walk to school, it is important to understand barriers to participation and how we can effectively address them. In this research beat, we’ve gathered the academic literature on Walking School Buses to share evidence and key takeaways.
When we talk about federal transportation dollars in this space, we most often focus on the Transportation Alternatives Program, since it has a strong focus on funding Safe Routes to School programs and bicycling and walking infrastructure.
This blog post was written by the Safe Routes Partnership's research reviewer, Christina Galardi.
“It’s just like riding a bike.”
This is an expression we often use to refer to a learned skill that comes naturally and is retained for a lifetime.
But how do you learn to ride a bike—and do so safely—in the first place?
While we could only give one Hubsmith award, we were impressed by all of the dedicated individuals who were nominated for an award. We’ll be profiling each of the nominees over the next few months and look forward to lifting up great work from all around the country.
