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Safe Routes to School Coming soon! Would you like your children to be able to ride a bike or walk to school safely? Would you like to see clear, designated routes to help them get there? Would you like them to receive encouragement at school to walk or ride as well as safety education? These concepts and more are coming to our community thanks to the combined efforts of Healthy Lifestyle La Plata (HLLP), Safe Roads Coalition, Bicycle Friendly Durango, Trails 2000, the City of Durango, La Plata County government, the 9-R School District, the Ignacio Schools, and Southern Ute Community Action Programs. In 2008, HLLP, in collaboration with the Durango School District wrote and won a 2-year $35,000 non-infrastructure Safe Route to School grant from the US Department of Transportation National Safe Routes to School program. The grant covers encouragement, a biking/walking audit, and safety education for children, parents, and staff to walk or ride a bike safely to Durango Schools. The kick-off event was the October 8 National Walk/Bike to School event. City Manager Ron Le Blanc, 9R Superintendent Keith Owen, Police Chief David Felice, CDOT Region 5 Director Richard Reynolds, a representative from Senator Ken Salazar’s office, bicycling legend Ned Overend, and other local biking aficionados welcomed children to Park Elementary and walked and “wheeled” with the kids around the block before school started. A bike was raffled off to students in K-8 donated by HLLP and Second Ave Sports. In coming months, watch for more events, assemblies, and information from this exciting initiative. We are actively recruiting parents and interested community members at each school to become involved and help get our kids back to walking and riding bikes to and from school. In 2008, Ignacio also won a Safe Routes to School non-infrastructure grant that will employ high school students to do a bike/walk audit of Ignacio schools and identify improvements that need to be made to make walking and biking safer. This year, the same partnership is applying for a three-year, $250,000 Safe Routes to School infrastructure grant that will cover hard-and soft-surface improvements around Park Elementary in Durango to make it a model school for safe biking and walking. One of the proposed improvements is to create custom Kids Route signage and mapping that will designate the safest routes for children and their parents to reach the school. The long term plan is to spread the Park model to other schools in the County, in coming years. The Safe Routes to School effort has won strong support from both the City of Durango and La Plata County governments and the Safe Roads Coalition is excited at the prospect of seeing children, their parents, and school staff all walking and riding bikes to school. Long and short term benefits include: fun!, improved health and fitness, decreased pollution, decreased congestion around schools, and lowered use of fossil fuels. Jeanine Justice is the Coordinator of the Healthy Lifestyles La Plata Coalition and can be contacted for additional information at jjustice@sucap.org. |
