Safe Routes to School Movement

Safe Routes to School (from the website of Bikes Belong Coalition)

is a national and international movement to create safe, convenient, and fun opportunities for children to bicycle and walk to school. Safe Routes to School provides a variety of important benefits to kids and their communities, including improved health, reduced traffic congestion, better air quality, and enhanced neighborhood safety. Safe Routes to School is a solution for the alarming nationwide trend toward child obesity and inactivity.

The Problem

In the last 30 years we have seen a loss of mobility among our nation's children that has severely impacted their personal health and their ability to explore their neighborhoods, even by walking or biking to school.

Consider these facts:

Within the span of a single generation, the number of children walking and bicycling to school has dramatically declined. In 1969, approximately 50% of children walked or biked to school, and 87% of children living within one mile of school did. Today, fewer than 15% of schoolchildren walk or bike to school. (CDC)
There are more than three times as many overweight children today as there were 25 years ago. (CDC, NHANES III)

As much as 20 to 30% of morning rush hour traffic can be parents driving children to schools. (Data from local communities)

These problems are all related to the fact that many communities lack basic infrastructure-sidewalks, bike lanes, trails, pathways, and crosswalks-and are no longer designed to encourage or allow children to walk and bicycle safely. Concerns about traffic, crime, and other obstacles keep children strapped in the back seat of cars, which further adds to the traffic on the road and pollution in the air.