March 2013

The Nevada statewide Safe Routes to School program is in its third round of national Safe Routes to School (SRTS) funding. Funding started in 2008 and the third round of SAFETEA-LU money is funded in 2012 and 2013. The state program covers the major urban areas in the state along with rural areas with a mixture of infrastructure and non-infrastructure projects. Approximately $10 million dollars has been spent or committed so far. There have been 25 projects with 12 partners in the state. 

I recently had the opportunity to speak to Mayor Carolyn Thompson of Elkton, Tennessee. Elkton has fewer than 20,000 residents and is about twenty-five miles north of Huntsville, Alabama. Elkton has one elementary school with 327 students in pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade. They also do not have any sidewalks in their town.

Of 52 documented Complete Streets policies in Florida, more than 20 were passed in 2012-2013. Florida network members were instrumental in the success of many of these policies.

California is proposing to do something revolutionary for walking and bicycling. California Governor Jerry Brown’s Administration has proposed a new Active Transportation Program (ATP) that will enable the state to become a leader in making walking and bicycling part of the mainstream transportation system.

Safe Routes to School has the amazing capacity to stretch its boundaries across the fields of health, transportation, safety, environment and more. This elasticity is an enormous advantage in terms of marketing the benefits of walking and bicycling to and from school as an effective approach to addressing major issues in all fields.