Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Toolbox
Safe Routes to School (SRTS) is a program with a simple goal: helping more children get to school by walking and bicycling. Envision active kids using safe streets, helped by engaged adults (from teachers to parents to police officers), surrounded by responsible drivers.
Safe Routes to School programs use a variety of strategies to make it easy, fun and safe for children to walk and bike to school. These strategies are often called the “Five Es.”
- Engineering: physical projects that are built to improve walking and bicycling conditions.
- Education: programs designed to teach children about traffic safety, bicycle and pedestrian skills, and traffic decision-making.
- Encouragement: programs that make it fun for kids to walk and bike. These programs may be challenges, incentive programs, regular events (e.g. “Walk and Bike Wednesdays”) or classroom activities.
- Enforcement: law enforcement strategies to improve driver behavior near schools.
- Evaluation: strategies to help understand program effectiveness, identify improvements, and ensure program sustainability.
The Ulster County SRTS Toolbox can be used to develop individual safe routes to school plans and implement the 5 E’s at schools around the County. This Toolkit is for any adult who wants to improve traffic safety and air quality around schools, help children be more physically active and “ready to learn” and improve our neighborhoods.
Whether you are a parent, a teacher, a school administrator, a neighbor, a public health professional, city staff, or a city official, this Toolkit will provide you with facts and figures, as well as ideas, inspiration and proven techniques. This Toolkit covers the Why, Who and How of Safe Routes to School.
- Parents can use this toolbox to understand the conditions at their children’s school and to become familiar with the ways the Safe Routes to School program can work to make walking and bicycling safer and easier.
- School District and School staff can use this toolbox to prioritize potential improvements identified on District property and develop programs that educate and encourage students and parents to seek alternatives to single family automobile commutes to school. In many cases, education and encouragement programs require dedicated parent volunteers to carry them out.
- Municipal staff can use this toolbox to identify issues and opportunities related to walking and biking and to prioritize potential short-term and long-term infrastructure improvements. Staff can also use this report to support Safe Routes to School funding opportunities.
- Law Enforcement agencies can use this toolbox to understand issues related to walking and biking to school and to plan for and prioritize enforcement activities that may make it easier and safer for students to walk and bike to school.