While members of Congress have been back in their districts meeting with constituents, House transportation committee staff has been huddled in Washington working on a transportation bill. You may recall that in July, the Senate completed action on its version of the transportation bill but the House instead pushed to extend current transportation law a few more months.
Bayard Rustin, the orchestrator behind the scenes of what we hail today as the civil rights movement, once said, “We need in every bay and community a group of angelic troublemakers.” Today, I bore witness to one of those angelic troublemakers by the name of Olatunji (Oboi) Reed, Co-Founder of Slow Roll Chicago, as he was recognized by the U.S. Department of Transportation as a 2015 White House Transportation Champion of Change.
This paper describes ways to evaluate the value of walking (the activity) and walkability (the quality of walking conditions, including safety, comfort and convenience).
To increase physical activity opportunities available through schools over the long term, we need to put it in writing – through policy.
The Safe Routes Partnership is proud to announce Nora Cody as the winner of the 2016 Hubsmith Safe Routes Champion Award. Nora exemplifies the same qualities that marked Deb’s career as a leader of the Safe Routes to School movement. Like Deb, Nora is deeply committed to ensuring that kids can walk and bike to school safely and leading the movement for a true culture shift.
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.
The US DOT recently enacted a rule that will require states and metropolitan planning organizations to set targets for bicycle and pedestrian safety. Targeted and effective interventions will be needed to achieve desired progress in reducing fatalities and injuries.
This report assesses the levels of physical activity and sedentary behaviors in American children and youth, facilitators and barriers for physical activity, and related health outcomes.
Hi Safe Routes advocates! My name is Kelechi Uzochukwu, and as administrative associate for the Safe Routes Partnership, one of my responsibilities is to provide useful and up-to-date studies and publications related to the Safe Routes to School movement.
Welcome to the News and Events blog! My name is Brooke Driesse, and I’m the communications manager for the Safe Routes Partnership. I’ve been with the Safe Routes Partnership for four and half years now. It is hard to believe it has been that long, and that the organization has grown from three staff in 2007 to 22 staff today – what a ride!
Next week I go to the National Bike Summit with several other staff and 800 of my closest friends to promote federal funding for bicycling (and walking). I find it frustrating that after decades of activism we still are not an accepted form of transportation in America in many places!
In the most recent application call, Arkansas received 36 applications requesting approximately $7 million dollars in projects. Because of the limited funds only 20 applications were selected with a budget of $1.5 million. As usual, the request for funding far outweighs what is available to applicants.
On April 18, we saw another unusual vote in Congress on the transportation bill. While current transportation spending is already extended until June 30, the House has just passed another extension (H.R. 4348) until September 30 on a vote of 293-127.
Safe Routes to School is on a roll in Washington, DC! The District of Columbia Safe Routes to School program continues to offer Safe Routes to School planning assistance to any school that requests it. Eight schools are currently receiving this assistance, for a total of 30 schools since the start of the program. DC schools are also able to request in-classroom pedestrian safety education for students in grades K-2 and bicycle safety education for students in grades 3-8.
Greetings Safe Routes Champions! Welcome to “Blog BLF!”
The seven states that comprise the state network project are all moving at a fast pace. Since the state advocacy organizers began in early March, they continue to make many very key contacts throughout their states.
After growing up playing on the school playground, I was dismayed to start seeing fences and locked gates at schools. The whole community feeling changed to a prison atmosphere, but to keep people out. John O.
Since 2017, the Safe Routes Partnership has partnered with community-based organizations, government agencies, and other national partners to improve local park access via walking and biking. In those seven years, we have shown that there is significant demand to unlock the full potential of neighborhood parks for health and community building by activating the routes to them. Along the way, this movement has highlighted the power of engaging parks and recreation stakeholders in creating safer, more equitable streets, ensuring that parks are integral to connected, thriving communities.
Last week I was in a communications training with other nonprofit groups - a really good one, by the way, from Spitfire Communications, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We were tasked throughout the week with writing stories, creating elevator speeches and developing communications plans. I learned a lot.
While all states have a SRTS coordinator, few, if any, have been at it as long as Pat Pieratte with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). She just retired after 35 years with the department, serving six years as the SRTS coordinator. Before she left to go folk dancing in Croatia and Slovenia, there was a gathering to talk about her successes and wish her well.