Safe walking and bicycling to school and other neighborhood
destinations is one benefit of active communities,
places where people of all ages and abilities can get to where
they want to go without relying only on a car. In active
communities, people feel safe to walk, want to bicycle, and have
destinations within short distances.
Active communities offer access to a public transportation
network that can take residents to locations beyond easy
walking or biking distance. They have an active
transportation infrastructure that includes sidewalks, bicycle
lanes or paths, and safe street crossings.
The resources listed to the right are intended to help local
city, county and school leaders access tools and information they
can use to support safe walking and biking options for students
and other residents.
In tough economic times expectations remain high for
cities and counties to provide quality public services and
facilities, though resources to fund desired projects are scarce.
One strategy for overcoming limited resources is for cities and
counties to combine forces with other agencies and organizations
to leverage expertise, staff time and funding.
View a recording of ILG’s brownbag webinar from Tuesday, December 4, 2012, featuring best practices in efficient transportation and with speaker Daryl K. Halls of Solano County Transportation Authority.
This concise 14-page resource provides an overview of the
connection between Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs and
environmental health, a formula for estimating the environmental
health impact of a program’s activities and examples of how
real-life SRTS programs have estimated their environmental health
impact.
Published by NLC’s Institute for Youth, Education, and Families
and the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the
report on “Community Wellness: Comprehensive City-School
Strategies to Reduce Childhood Obesity” focuses on lessons
learned by cities that participated in a 2007-08 technical
assistance project.
Two-thirds of adults and one-third of children are overweight or obese. Left unchecked, obesity’s effects on health, health care costs, and our productivity as a nation could become catastrophic.
The Institute of Medicine, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has released a report which focuses on five critical goals for preventing obesity:
Bicycling and Walking in the U.S.: 2012 Benchmarking Report is an
essential resource and tool for government officials, advocates,
and those working to promote bicycling and walking.
During the summer and fall of 2008 the Institute for Local
Government’s Healthy Neighborhoods Program, in Collaboration with
Cities Counties and Schools Partnership, organized a series of
three online “Web Dialogues” for city, county, and school
officials and staff members to connect and share information
related to planning for better resident health. The documents
below contain the content of three ten day online dialogues and
the resources that were posted by our volunteer panelists and
participants.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) hosts a web-based resource for law enforcement officers.
The Safe Routes to School for Law Enforcement website provides
tips, tools and other materials to help law enforcement officers
get involved in Safe Routes to School (SRTS), a national effort
to enable and encourage children to safely walk and bike to
school.
