A new information brief, issued today by the National Center for Safe Routes to School and written by the Safe Routes Partnership, demonstrates how regional transportation planning authorities (or MPOs) can advance Safe Routes to School priorities using the relatively new Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP).

The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee has set its consideration of the transportation bill for Thursday, October 22. This is coming in just under the wire, as the current transportation law expires at the end of October.  Congress will still have to do an extension of current law to allow the House to complete its work and then come to agreement with the Senate -- hopefully by mid-December.  (Update 10/22/15:  The committee completed consideration of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act today.  An amendment offered by Reps.

We have been advocating together for three years for a new transportation bill that supports Safe Routes to School, walking and bicycling.  Now that Congress has passed the FAST Act and locked in funding for the Transportation Alternatives Program (or as it is now also known the STP Setaside), what should advocates be focusing on?

The City of Pryor Creek, Oklahoma recently became the first city in the state to approve a Complete Streets ordinance with the unanimous approval of Ordinance No. 2016-01.

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.

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.