Parks advocates and Safe Routes to School practitioners alike can use this fact sheet for ideas on tying Safe Routes to Parks activities into their Walk to School Day events and keeping up the momentum beyond October.

On Thursday, October 14th at 3:00 PM Eastern/12:00 PM Pacific Safe Routes Partnership is hosting a free one-hour webinar:

Key takeaways:

• Riding a bicycle is a concrete way for children to participate in climate action. Participation in an everyday activity that makes a difference is ‘constructive hope’.

• Children who live in low-traffic neighborhoods are more likely to engage in activities like walking and biking, leading to more social interaction, exposure to nature, and outdoor play; all of which create feelings of connection to the environment. Active transportation is a way for children to feel invested in protecting this connection.
• Children who live in high-traffic neighborhoods spend more time indoors, have fewer opportunities to make friends, and experience independent social connections. They are less likely to walk or bike due to traffic concerns. This contributes to negative feelings about their neighborhoods.
• A common objection to children biking is based on unsafe roads. Streets are built for cars. Traffic is intimidating and poses risk, leading to perceptions of unsafety. Yet injury rates do not reflect this perception as a reality.
• The many gains of children bicycling outweigh the risk of injury. Active transportation also aids in the development of self-esteem, independence, self-efficacy, and spatial navigation skills.

Bicycle Safer Journey helps educators, parents and others who care about bicycle safety to get the conversation started with children and youth. 

This promotional toolkit can be used to dissimenate the report, Investing in Health, Safety, and Mobility: A Report on State Funding for Walking, Bicycling, and Safe Routes to School - Promotional Toolkit.

Balance bikes are bikes that have no pedals, and children push themselves along the ground with their feet, figuring out how to find their balance. Balance Bikes are an innovative method of teaching kids how to ride a bike without relying on training wheels. 

Community level strategies to promote physical activity have the potential to improve health and well-being. This report provides evidence and an analysis on the benefits of promoting active travel to school for children of all ages.

This toolkit includes communications resources, content and collateral that you can customize and share to get more schools, parents and students involved. We encourage you to use them in your outreach and campaigns.

This toolkit provides great step-by-step instructions on how to create and plan your own traffic playground.

BikeNWA believes that learning to ride a bike in a positive, safe and fun environment is key to becoming a happy and healthy life-long rider. Let’s Play BikesNWA is a free three-part guide to help parents to facilitate learning in a simple, fun and low-stress way.

Below are videos to help coordinators, parents and educators teach the skills necessary for everyone to be safe and confident road users.

Watch videos below to learn how students and organizations are using events and programs to encourage sustainable transportation and improve their commute.

English and Spanish Walking School Bus materials and promotional videos. IL

Each of these Active Transportation Bingo cards focuses on a specific theme and you can use them to prompt different discussions about walking or cycling.

Learn to ride is a class/method/program to teach someone how to ride a bike for the first time.