Safe Sidewalks and Safe Routes to School

A Good Idea

Description

In one example of this initiative, Holladay City, Utah incorporated the Safe Sidewalks/Safe Routes to School programs into its city plan in 2003. The program funded the construction of sidewalks in high-pedestrian traffic areas, focusing on high-priority zones like neighborhood schools. Parents and school staff also identified and mapped the walking routes they deemed less safe and worked with engineers employed by the initiative to improve them.

Goal / Mission

Safe Routes to School programs aim to make it safer for students to walk and bike to school and encourage more walking and biking where safety is not a barrier.

Results / Accomplishments

The travel patterns reported in 2016 by the National Center’s study of 720,000 parent surveys from 6,500 schools show a promising upward trend: walking to and from school increased from less than 14 percent to more than 17 percent of all school trips between 2007-08 and 2014. Additionally, in 2015, the National Center’s analysis found that low-income communities were well represented in SRTS funding.

About this Promising Practice

Organization(s)
National Center for Safe Routes to School
Primary Contact
National Center for Safe Routes to School
info@saferoutesinfo.org
http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/
Topics
Environmental Health / Built Environment
Organization(s)
National Center for Safe Routes to School
For more details
http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/

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A Good Idea meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program funding source, program implementation steps and outcomes.
  2. The program evaluation is limited to descriptive measure(s) of success/accomplishment (i.e., program participation rates, number of services/education sessions/radio messages provided). Note: oftentimes, the program has been newly implemented and a program evaluation has not yet been conducted. Programs that have not yet been evaluated, but which show promise in improving health or quality of life, are classified as Good Ideas until an evaluation is conducted.