Thursday, November 18, 2010

Teach your children well: safe routes to school

In my first post the great debate: vehicular traffic vs. segregated cycling, education for cyclists came as a critical issue in my research as well as the response.


Whether on the road under four-wheel drive gas-powered vehicles, or do you prefer riding in a room for human vehicles as an adult, creating a community of safe, named confident and healthy cyclists starts with helping children and families navigate, the streets and Wege.Mit mission of support communities in their efforts to hiking and cycling offer a viable option for children to school safe routes to school (SRTS) programs throughout the country communities with the tools to create and implement initiatives to increase the number of students travel to and from the school on foot and by bicycle.


Not surprisingly, are today's safe routes to school programs in the United States to modeled Denmark's safe routes to school initiative, which began in the early 1970s. 1997 Began the first of many programs in the United States in the Bronx, NY.Im spring 2006 was the National Center for Safe Routes to school founded thanks to the Federal legislation by Congress in 2005 adopted this legislation not only set aside $ 612 million for the program over a period of four years, but also asked each Member State shall appoint a SRTS Coordinator that cause trouble at the State level.  The National Center for SRTS collects and disseminates an incredible amount of information, statistics on current mode share of guides to understanding how policy and infrastructure affect how people travel. 


  Three years into the program SRTS made an interim report released and declared 4,566 schools in the United States were to develop resources and improve your programs excellent and new efforts in communities, know to appreciate the achievements of these existing programs.And there are some incredible Erfolgsgeschichten.Auburn, Washington School District received $185,000, an unfriendly to restructure high traffic road nearby Olympic middle school.  With the creation of a shared use path, crosswalks, lighting, and characters running education and encouragement, events, the number of students, to walk or bike to school increased to 20% - a percentage that is higher than the national average.Overall, the district now establishing $220,000 a year in transport costs, to justify not only federal investment, but also place in the budget for more important things stores.(Call me crazy but when prompted to choose between financing buses within a mile of schools or invest cost-effective infrastructure is so that we can provide children with books, art supplies and teacher, I with the latter every time)



Safe routes to school is an incredible initiative but it is always in the very early stages, the kind help us nor change way we think about communities, health and transport in the United States.Out of nearly 130,000 families only 2% investigated period April 2007 until May 2009 reported that their primary and secondary school children bicycles to and from school ritt.Weiteres 11 15% school walking place riding in a family vehicle or on a Schulbus.Es examples of impressive improvements to compete in a country where we have serious and growing problems with pollution, obesity and financing of education, we need bikes like Auburn, Washington and many others still strongly when bus leave but the majority of the districts and (automobile transport and even in improved Auburn, hikers and bikers are still the minority) would be too dramatic it and cliché for me, I told our children and thus the future of our nation to speichern.Wahrscheinlich.Aber it anyway.


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