Tuesday, April 30, 2024 – 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time

Please join the Safe Routes Partnership and California Transportation Commission for a webinar on April 30 about a new change in the ATP Guidelines: additional questions about the non-infrastructure program in Combined Infrastructure/Non-Infrastructure applications.

For a number of years, we have argued that the format and rubrics of Combined applications in the ATP did not allow either applicants to adequately highlight their proposed educational and encouragement programs, nor evaluators to adequately score them.

Thanks to the adoption of the online applications portable Submittable this cycle, applicants proposing Combined Infrastructure/Non-Infrastructure non-application questions will be prompted for additional information specific to their non-infrastructure components, and evaluators will be given guidance on how to evaluate them.
In this webinar, we will give an overview of the new questions, provide suggestions on how best to answer them, and answer any questions you might have.

Wednesday, May 15, 2024
2pm – 3pm ET

Join us for our final Walk, Ride, and Roll webinar of the school year! This session will explore strategies and best practices for engaging and including students with disabilities in Safe Routes programs. Our expert panelists will share how they lead and participate in inclusive programs, how they partner with local champions, and how other Safe Routes practitioners can make their programs more inclusive and accessible.

Key Takeaways:

• Safe Routes to School is one of only fourteen evidence-based interventions included in the CDC’s High-Impact in Five Years Initiative (HI-5). This initiative promotes strategies that show a positive health impact, results within five years, and are cost-effective. Safe Routes to School is the only intervention included related to active transportation.
• Safe Routes to School programs in the United States led to a reduction in traffic-related injuries around schools and neighborhoods.
• In New York City over a ten-year period, injuries decreased by 44 percent in census tracts with Safe Routes to School improvements like new crossing signs, speed bumps, speed boards, and high-visibility crosswalks.
• Texas (state-wide) pedestrian and bicyclist injury rates among school-age children decreased by 14 percent during the program study period (January 2008- June 2013).
• A study of 18 states found that Safe Routes to School programs reduced pedestrian and bicyclist injury rates in school-age children by 23 percent.
• In an evaluation of 47 California schools, pedestrian and bicycle collisions among children ages 5 to 18 in Safe Routes to School project areas were reduced by 53 percent.  Evidence shows economic benefits exceed the cost of active travel to school interventions.

Wednesday April 10th, 2024, 2–3pm Eastern

The days are longer, the weather is warmer, and National Bike Month is just around the corner! Join us for an informal Zoom session to connect with other Safe Routes practitioners and get ready for Spring programming. Share your program successes and challenges, swap resources, brainstorm project ideas, and let us know how the Partnership can support your work going forward.

NOTE: There will not be formal presentations during this session. The bulk of the time will be reserved for connecting with others during breakout groups. We will not be facilitating the discussion but we will provide guiding questions and are always available to help.

 

Wednesday, April 17th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm Mountain

How do you change the culture of active transportation in schools? Join us as we explore community engagement strategies aimed at changing behaviors and attitudes around walking, biking, and rolling. Learn how Denver’s Advancing a Culture of Active Transportation in Schools (ACATS) program became a model for community engagement, and how they leveraged this success to secure Safe Routes to School funding.

Featured Speakers:

Kori Johnson, Program and Engagement Manager, Safe Routes Partnership

Priscilla Bloom, Safe Routes to School Program Manager, City and County of Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI)

Key Takeaways:

• Nearly half of the parents surveyed report that their child walks through an area where cars are dropping off or picking up children to get to or from the school building.
• Over one-third of parents surveyed say drivers are not paying attention and worry that their child will be hurt near the car or bus drop-off area.
• Parents surveyed identified “drivers not paying attention” as the top school traffic safety risk, followed by speeding, parking in no-parking areas, and dropping off in the wrong location.
• An overwhelming majority of parents (94 percent) feel that school officials should act when parents do not follow traffic rules near the school, and two-thirds of parents support the school putting up cones, gates, or other treatments to better direct traffic flow.

Key Takeaways:

• The benefits of having regular Walking School Busses (WSB) are cumulative. With each additional WSB trip, kids were 23 percent more likely to arrive to school on time and 21 percent less likely to experience bullying.
• Forty-two percent of programs reported improvements in students’ classroom behavior.
• The most common barriers to walking school bus programs were recruiting and maintaining student participants and identifying and maintaining route leaders.
• Programs in low-income communities were less likely to be coordinated by a parent than programs in moderate- and high-income communities (3.2 percent vs 29.6 percent).
• Programs in low- and moderate-income communities were more likely to have external funding than those in high-income communities (71.4 percent vs 37 percent).
• Programs within the United States had fewer route leaders overall, but more route leaders from the school and school supports than programs outside the United States.
• Programs with more route leaders reached more students and were more likely to report sustainability than programs with fewer route leaders.
• Programs coordinated by parents and external organizations had a lower reach (total student participation) than those coordinated by school or district staff.
• Programs coordinated by parents as opposed to school staff had a slightly easier time recruiting route leaders and were more likely to have a higher number of walks per week.
• Programs were successful despite having a low level of support from school and without strong school involvement. They were also successful when the neighborhood and built environment conditions were not supportive of walking.

Wednesday, February 7^th from 2pm-3pm ET

The Walk, Ride, and Roll Webinar Series is back for 2024! Join us as we explore creative partnerships that support safety and spark joy in Safe Routes programs. Whether you are looking for new outreach venues, evaluation experts, or fun ways to “shake up” your program, this webinar will show you how to find the right partner to fit your needs!

Featured Speakers:

• Kori Johnson, Program and Engagement Manager, Safe Routes Partnership
  
  This webinar is part of the Walk, Ride, and Roll Webinar Series supported by General Motors and presented by the Safe Routes Partnership.

January 18^th at 3 PM Eastern via Zoom
Postponed: January 25^th at 3 PM Eastern via Zoom

Join the State Funding Strategies workgroup to hear about the state active transportation funding trends and how you, as an advocate, can best set yourself up for productive conversations with legislators on active transportation. Ava Gallo, Climate and Energy Manager at the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, will join us to cover what got through state legislatures in 2023 and what is getting introduced in 2024 to support multimodal trails, biking, walking, and safe routes to school. We will discuss what framing and messages have worked well and what legislators asking for. Register here

About the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators: Created by and for state legislators, the Caucus serves as a resource on environmental issues through legislative research, organized events, and by facilitating collaboration between lawmakers working on similar issues. Their mission is to empower a nonpartisan network of legislative champions to protect, conserve, and improve the natural and human environment.

A Community Power Map is a visual tool to help you identify individuals, organizations, or institutions that may influence the outcome of the positive changes to increase park access in your community. This resource was created to guide you in developing your own community power map to build connections and improve park access.

Multimodal trails are off-road routes that can be used for walking and biking. This factsheet outlines ways that states advance equity goals through their multimodal trail programs: typically by defining high-need communities and then prioritizing them in project selection and funding.

This tool was developed to support people who are interested in a simple, structured approach to identifying the environmental and mobility-related characteristics of a
place, recording this information, and using this data to inform next steps. This tool was designed to support people who are experts of the place where they live, work,
or play.