Have you ever looked around at the other cyclists on a club ride and wondered where the kids are? If you’re like me, you do it all the time. And you’ve been doing it for years and years. And you’ve asked yourself, with a sense of desperation bordering on despair, “What can we do about it?” The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind — a tailwind from the new national Safe Routes to School Program.

Those of us over 30 know that years and years ago more than 66% of American children regularly biked and walked to school and everywhere else. Experts tell us that now only about 13% regularly bike and walk. And the percentage that regularly bikes is somewhere around 1%.

In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health in April, 2003 entitled “Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health: Lessons from The Netherlands and Germany” Professor John Pucher of Rutgers and Dr. Lewis Dijkstra of the European Commission say: “Even in the sprawling metropolitan areas of the USA, 41% of all trips in 2001 were shorter than 2 miles, and 28% were shorter than one mile. Bicycling can easily cover distances up to two miles and most people can walk at least a mile. Yet Americans use their cars for 66% of all trips up to a mile long and for 89% of all trips between one and two miles long. Clearly, there is enormous potential for increased walking and cycling over these shorter trip distances.”

Is it any wonder that our streets are so congested with car traffic? Is it any shock that we are in non-attainment for ozone and for fine particulate matter (soot)? Is it any surprise that our planet is warming up? Is it news any longer that two-thirds of American adults and dramatically increasing numbers of children and adolescents are overweight or obese and that health care costs are soaring? Is it a revelation that our neighborhoods are less safe when the eyes of cyclists and pedestrians are no longer on our streets?

Some suggest that the reason that the level of bicycling and walking has plunged so precipitously is that there are simply so many other things for kids (and adults) to do these days. But transportation and health experts say that the main reason we aren’t biking and walking as much nowadays is the “built environment.” The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) stated in its 2000 design guidance on accommodating bicycling and walking in our transportation infrastructure:

Injury and fatality numbers for bicyclists and pedestrians remain stubbornly high, levels of bicycling and walking remain frustratingly low, and most communities continue to grow in ways that make travel by means other than the private automobile quite challenging.

That’s the FHWA talking, the agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation with the responsibility for implementing the national transportation policy adopted by Congress including the national policy of integrating bicycling and walking into the transportation mainstream. And the FHWA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and other national, state, regional, and local transportation, health, and bike/ped advocacy organizations are working feverishly on all sorts of strategies to turn things around.

Over the past ten years or so groups here in the U.S. have adopted “Safe Routes to School” ideas pioneered in Denmark, Australia, Great Britain, and Canada. With encouragement and support from NHTSA, pilot Safe Routes to School projects are flourishing in Marin County, California, in the Bronx in New York, in Arlington, Massachusetts, in Chicagoland, and throughout Texas. A couple years ago the Columbus Area Pedestrian Safety Committee, led by the folks at the Columbus Health Department and assisted by the Central Ohio Bicycle Advocacy Coalition and others, began a pilot SR2S project at Highland Elementary School on the West side of Columbus. Look out for Walking School Buses in the Hilltop area!!!

Some of us were in the room at the Rayburn House Office Building early on the morning of March 4, 2004 when Rep. Jim Oberstar (who represents the Arrowhead of Minnesota and is the chief architect of all the bicycling and walking provisions and funding in federal transportation law), the author and sponsor of the Safe Routes to School program, told those of us participating in the League of American Bicyclists’ National Bike Summit that the purpose of Safe Routes to School is to teach a whole new generation of kids to make bicycling and walking a part of their everyday routines. Rep. Oberstar inspired us to go talk to our Senators and Representatives about Safe Routes to School and to go to work in our own communities to make Safe Routes to School an effective program.

In August 2005 the new federal transportation law, SAFETEA-LU (Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century - A Legacy for Users, whew!) was signed into law. There are a lot of good things in it for bicycling and walking. One of the MOST important things is the new national Safe Routes to School Program.

In a nutshell, SR2S programs use four strategies called the “4-E’s” to create “Safe Routes to School”: (1) Encouragement: uses events and contests to entice students to try walking and biking; (2) Education: gives students on-bike and on-foot safety training during or after school and conducts motorist safety campaigns; (3) Engineering: focuses on creating physical improvements around and near the school like bikeways and walkways and on calming traffic; and (4) Enforcement: uses local law enforcement to ensure that motorists obey traffic laws in school areas.

Key features of the new national SR2S program include: (1) It is 100% federally funded which means that there will be NO required match from the local government or nonprofit agency; (2) It is limited to schools serving grades K-8; high schools will not be eligible for funding through the federal SR2S program but may be eligible for funding through other federal transportation programs; and (3) A minimum of 10% and a maximum of 30% of a state’s SR2S allocation must be used for non-infrastructure related activities like education and encouragement and enforcement.

Ohio’s allocation of federal SR2S money over the next five years is $21,075,096 according to the FHWA, including $1 million during the current fiscal year. The Ohio SR2S program will be administered by the Ohio Department of Transportation, which has just appointed a State SR2S Coordinator.

What can you do to help? First, spread the word about SR2S: let every school board and every school principal know about it. Second, encourage your neighborhood school to adopt SR2S programs and offer to get involved in your school’s SR2S “team.” Third, COBAC and other groups involved with SR2S programs will need a few people qualified to teach on-bike and on-foot safety lessons and to lead SR2S school teams: if you are interested and want to start getting prepared to for this opportunity get in touch with COBAC yesterday.

For more details about the new SR2S program go to the FHWA website here: http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/saferoutes/index.htm

For more information about how to run SR2S programs go to the NHTSA website and look over the SR2S “toolkit” (89-page booklet authored by the Marin County Bicycle Coalition) here: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/pedbimot/bike/Safe-Routes-2002/

Finally, for a look at what a full-fledged Safe Routes to School program looks like, including classroom lesson plans, go to the Marin County Bicycle Coalition’s dedicated SR2S website here: http://www.saferoutestoschools.org/

See ya on the road.

John Gideon, Columbus Outdoor Pursuits (Past President)

Central Ohio Bicycle Advocacy Coalition (President)