The Safe Routes Partnership is pleased to support the For Every Kid Coalition in the Pacific Northwest region. For Every Kid is a growing coalition calling for Safe Routes to School for every kid in the Metro-area; vocal support from cities and school districts is an outcome of key partners coming together to promote the benefits and work with communities and we have been an active part of the leadership of this effort.

Local leaders agree: creating safe options to walk, bike, or ride the bus to school is critical to improving the health of kids.

If you have been following our federal transportation updates for a while, this update may sound a bit like Groundhog’s Day.  Yet again, Congress has voted to extend the MAP-21 transportation law and yet again, lack of funding is the culprit.

This summer has been a busy one for transportation.  In addition to the late June committee consideration of the DRIVE Act, both the House and Senate are moving forward on transportation.

While just a few weeks ago, we were gearing up for the House to move a new transportation bill through the Committee and then the floor, action has once again been delayed.

We are now six weeks out from when Congress passed the FAST Act, securing funding for Safe Routes to School and the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) for five more years. Here at the Safe Routes Partnership, we've been spending a lot of time educating advocates about what changed and what didn't in the FAST Act, and gathering as much information as we can to help you access the funding.

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.

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.