WICHITA AREA METROPOLITAN PLANNING ORGANIZATION

Safe Routes to School (SRTS) is an essential program that aims to create secure pathways for students to commute to and from school using active modes of transportation, such as walking and biking. By ensuring safe travel routes for students, we not only encourage healthier lifestyles but also work towards alleviating traffic congestion and reducing the community’s carbon footprint.

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The SRTS framework is built around the 6 Es, which summarize the key components of the program. An SRTS plan should include each component of the framework:

• Engagement - Listening to students, families, teachers, and school leaders, working with existing community organizations, and building intentional, ongoing engagement opportunities into the program structure.

• Equity - Ensuring that Safe Routes to School initiatives benefit all demographic groups, with particular attention to ensuring safe, healthy, and fair outcomes for low-income students, students of color, students of all genders, students with disabilities, and others.

• Engineering - Creating physical improvements to streets and neighborhoods that make walking and bicycling safer, more comfortable, and more convenient.

• Encouragement - Generating enthusiasm and increased student walking and bicycling through events, activities, and programs.

• Education - Providing students and the community with the skills to walk and bicycle safely, educating them about benefits of walking and bicycling, and teaching them about the broad range of transportation choices.

• Evaluation - Assessing which approaches are more or less successful, ensuring that programs and initiatives support equitable outcomes, and identifying unintended consequences or opportunities to improve the effectiveness of each approach.

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Two surveys will need to be distributed to evaluate the impact of the SRTS Plan:

• Parent Survey - Information collected from this survey includes whether parents allow their children to walk or bike to or from school, safety concerns along routes to school, and factors that may prohibit or permit nonmotorized travel to or from school. This data collection effort will most likely be done once over a couple of years.

• Student Travel Tally - This is to be completed by classroom teachers by asking for shows of hands from students on designated dates. Information to be collected includes modes of transportation to/from school for each student on the designated date. Teachers will also note restrictive factors, such as weather conditions. This data collection effort will be done every semester.

 

Visit https://saferoutes.ksdot.gov/ to learn more about Kansas Safe Routes to School.