I recently had the opportunity to speak to Mayor Carolyn Thompson of Elkton, Tennessee. Elkton has fewer than 20,000 residents and is about twenty-five miles north of Huntsville, Alabama. Elkton has one elementary school with 327 students in pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade. They also do not have any sidewalks in their town.
Of 52 documented Complete Streets policies in Florida, more than 20 were passed in 2012-2013. Florida network members were instrumental in the success of many of these policies.
California is proposing to do something revolutionary for walking and bicycling. California Governor Jerry Brown’s Administration has proposed a new Active Transportation Program (ATP) that will enable the state to become a leader in making walking and bicycling part of the mainstream transportation system.
Safe Routes to School has the amazing capacity to stretch its boundaries across the fields of health, transportation, safety, environment and more. This elasticity is an enormous advantage in terms of marketing the benefits of walking and bicycling to and from school as an effective approach to addressing major issues in all fields.
We have all been waiting to learn how the new federal transportation bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, or MAP-21, will be implemented. The new Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) is of particular interest since it now includes Safe Routes to School and Transportation Enhancements funding.