How Safe Routes to School Began

41 DID YOU WALK OR RIDE A bicycle to school? Chances are that you did. Thirty years ago, the sight of children walking or bicycling to school was common—66 percent of all children did so. Now, however, 87 percent of all trips to and from school are made by car or bus.1 Safe Routes to School (SR2S) provides some solutions to reverse this generational shift. It is a growing movement that integrates health, fitness, traffic relief, environmental awareness and safety goals into one program, with transportation professionals playing a key role. SR2S refers to a variety of multidisciplinary programs aimed at promoting walking and bicycling to and from school and improving traffic safety through education, incentives, increased law enforcement and engineering measures. SR2S programs typically involve partnerships among municipalities, school districts, community and parent volunteers, law enforcement agencies and transportation professionals. Studies in a number of communities developing SR2S plans have shown that parents driving their children to school generate 20 to 30 percent of morning automobile traffic. Parents cite a number of reasons for driving their children to and from school (see Figure 1). This increase in driving increases traffic congestion around schools, prompting even more parents to drive their children due to fears about their safety. Reversing this trend requires a comprehensive approach to improving safety along routes to and near schools. Engineering measures are a central part of the solution. Although the focus is on school areas, SR2S programs address issues that can improve quality of life for entire neighborhoods and communities—improving safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, reducing traffic speed and congestion and increasing physical activity and health. HOW SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL BEGAN Although planning and engineering around school zones is not new for transportation professionals, comprehensive SR2S programs have only recently become prevalent in the United States. The movement has its roots in Europe. The first national SR2S program began in Denmark in 1976. A pilot program was implemented in the City of Odense to address a growing child pedestrian accident rate. The City implemented a number of engineering improvements including a network of pedestrian and bicycle paths, established slow speed areas, narrowed roads and installed traffic islands, which resulted in an 85-percent reduction in traffic injuries to children. Subsequent large-scale programs in Great Britain and Canada in the 1990s also were successful in reducing child pedestrian and bicyclist injury accident frequency and encouraging more children to walk and bike to school. In the United States, a national SR2S program began in fall 2000 when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) awarded demonstration project grants to Marin County, CA, USA and Arlington, MA, USA. Both pilot programs were successful in increasing the number of children walking and bicycling to school regularly (see Figure 2). Since then, SR2S has grown rapidly in the United States, with scores of programs enacted in communities of all sizes, ranging from comprehensive citywide efforts to single school improvement plans. The popularity of SR2S continues to grow—some states are piloting their own programs and others have established dedicated SR2S funding for implementing capital projects.