Missouri Bicycle News :: Safe Routes to Schools Workshop in KC Friday, 25 April 2003

From Aaron Bartlett of the Mid-America Regional Council:

If you are over 30 years old you may remember as a kid walking or bicycling to school. Today the situation is very different. Transportation Planners Mayer Hillman John Adams and John Whitelegg reported in their 1991 work "One False Move... A Study Of Children's Independent Mobility," that in 1971, 80% of 7 and 8 year-old children went to school on their own, by 1990 only 9% were making the journey unaccompanied, with more than four times as many 7 to 11 year-olds being driven in 1990 compared with 20 years earlier. Several reasons are leading to this trend. Find answers to difficult questions in a new program appropriately named "Safe Routes To School". Register and pay online today!

What is it?
Safe Routes To School (SR2S) training is an opportunity to join school officials, local planners, transportation officials and others at a one-day workshop that provides a clear blueprint for how to create a SR2S program in your community. Some of the topics that will be covered in the hands-on program include encouragement and education approaches, enforcement and engineering approaches, and how to map routes to schools in your community using the interactive Safe Streets Toolkit.

Safe Routes To School is part of a growing movement to improve opportunities for youth travel to school by bike or on foot. The renewed interest in non-motorized travel is the result of increased concern over student health, including childhood obesity and diabetes, dwindling budgets to transport students by bus, and concern about traffic safety for children walking or bicycling to school.

Nationally Recognized Speakers
Wendi Kallins, Marin County Bicycle Coalition, authored the National Highway Traffic Safety Association Safe Routes to School guide. David Parisi, PE, has 17 years experience in multimodal corridor design and recently developed a toolbox of solutions to common school-related issues titled Transportation Tools for Improving Children's Health and Safety. He will present this plus other state-of-the-art developments related to SR2S at several upcoming national conferences this year.

Kallins and Parisi will present the four-pronged approach that SR2S uses: engineering, encouragement, education, and enforcement.

The Mid-America Regional Council and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services have teamed up to offer this innovative training as a way to encourage a local grassroots approach to the health and safety issues that SR2S addresses.

As part of the workshop, participants will receive given a guidebook and a packet of SR2S information, including the names of those who participate locally and from across the state.

Register Today!
The SR2S workshop will be held Friday, April 25, from 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM at the Doubletree Hotel, 1301 Wyandotte, in downtown Kansas City, Mo. Parking is provided beneath the hotel. Training costs $55 and includes lunch, a guidebook and other program materials.

Registration options:

Register online with an agency purchase order
Register online and pay with a credit card
Call Beverly Werden at 816/474-4240 ext. 234, fax to 816/421-7758 or e-mail gti @ marc.org. Please register by April 21.

Aaron Bartlett
Bike/Ped Transportation Planner
Mid-America Regional Council
600 Broadway, Suite 300
Kansas City, MO 64105-1554
abartlett@marc.org
816.474.4240

Related:: News: U.S. House votes overwhelmingly to support strong Safe Routes to School program; News: Walk to School Day Oct 4th

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