Leading Bike Buses

Bike Buses are a fun and safe way for groups of students to ride their bikes to school together with an adult leader.

• Bike Buses: Let’s Bike to School Together
  This guide includes step-by-step tips, examples, and planning tools to help families, schools, and communities start their own bike bus and make biking to school more doable and enjoyable for everyone.

Teaching Young Pedestrians

Washington, DC.

No one is born knowing pedestrian safety skills. However, these are skills that are useful throughout life and typically start holding the hand of a responsible adult. As children grow, they are ready for more advanced decision making, such as what’s needed to decide when to cross a street.

• Teaching Children to Walk Safely as They Grow and Develop
  This guide provides tips and strategies by age to help caregivers teach safe walking habits as kids grow.

Partnering with Youth

Detroit, MI. Source: City of Detroit

Young people in the United States and across the globe are playing an important role in shaping the future transportation system. They are working with transportation departments, their communities and schools to advocate for policy change, construct quick-build projects, generate community support for slowing traffic, especially around schools, and much more.

• Engaging Youth to Advance Safer Streets for All: Guide
  This guide offers a framework for building effective partnerships with young people, based on real-life experiences and interviews with youth-led organizations across the country.
• Engaging Youth to Advance Safer Streets for All: Recommendations
  This companion to Engaging Youth to Advance Safer Streets for All: Guide shares real-world tips for addressing common challenges and taking action to build strong, lasting partnerships with youth.
• Youth on Local Government Boards, part of the three-part series “How Local Governments Are Engaging Youth: An Opportunity to Connect with Transportation”
  Inviting youth to join local boards is a meaningful way to include their voices in transportation decision-making. This resource shares examples, tips, and lessons from communities that have successfully added youth members to their boards and commissions.
• Engaging Youth in Local Government Road Safety Initiatives, part of the three-part series “How Local Governments Are Engaging Youth: An Opportunity to Connect with Transportation”
  This resource shares examples of short-term projects that communities have used to bring fresh ideas, build community connections, and create meaningful partnerships with students.
• Youth Boards that Report to Local Government, part of the three-part series “How Local Governments Are Engaging Youth: An Opportunity to Connect with Transportation”
  Creating youth-only boards gives young people a dedicated space to share ideas and advise local leaders on transportation and other issues. This resource shares how communities have set up youth boards that report to local government and offers tips for getting started.
• Across the U.S.: Youth-Led Groups Taking Action for Road Safety and Calling for Change
  Slowing down traffic where kids travel makes streets safer for everyone. This info brief explains the benefits of lowering speeds in school zones and other areas where children walk and bike, shares strategies communities can use, and shows how starting with youth-focused areas supports broader Vision Zero goals.

Understanding School Travel Patterns

Identifying places where safety improvements are needed and monitoring for changes in travel modes (like walking and biking) requires collecting and reviewing data.

Using Data to Support Active Travel

Collecting and analyzing school travel data helps communities understand how students get to school, where safety risks exist, and how to support walking and biking. This information can guide decisions, prioritize improvements, and help ensure efforts match the specific needs of students.

• School Travel Data: Innovative Collection Methods and Uses
  Understanding how students travel to school helps communities plan safer routes. This info brief shares four examples of how school travel data can be collected in different ways, at different costs, and by agencies of any size.
• What Makes a “Biking” School? How Some Schools Have Pulled Ahead in Cycling Rates
  Biking to school is more likely when schools and communities create the right conditions to support it. This info brief looks at schools in Santa Clara County, California, to understand what leads to higher biking rates. It highlights practical ways teachers, administrators, Safe Routes to School coordinators, and community leaders can help more students bike to school.

Looking at Trends in School Travel Over Time

Understanding how school travel has changed over time can help shape better policies, programs, and infrastructure. These resources offer insights into how student travel patterns have shifted, what has influenced those changes, how strategies have evolved, and the impact of Safe Routes to School programs. Together, they offer useful insights for planning and improving programs today.

• Who is Walking or Biking to School? Patterns from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey and Future Directions
• Trends in Walking and Bicycling to School from 2007 to 2012
• Shifting Modes: A Comparative Analysis of SRTS Program Elements and Travel Mode Outcomes
• How Children Get to School: School Traffic Patterns from 1969-2009

Changing Infrastructure

Washington, DC

The built environment plays a big role in safety for people walking and biking. Careful consideration is needed to identify high-risk locations and prioritize improvements in a youth-centered way.

• The Benefits of Slowing Down Traffic Starting Where Children Walk and Bike
  Youth don’t just want safer streets, they want to help shape how those changes happen. This resource shares what 14 youth-led groups across the country are doing to improve road safety, how their communities benefit, what support helps them succeed, and the challenges they face.
• Safety-Based Prioritization for Youth Pedestrian Travel Planning: Applying Systemic Pedestrian Safety Analysis to Youth Travel
  This guide offers a process for how transportation professionals can focus infrastructure improvements where they’re needed most. This info brief shares a pilot project with the School District of Philadelphia using Systemic Pedestrian Safety Analysis to find where students are most at risk.
• Creating Accessible, Equitable, Safe, and Complete Networks for Young Pedestrians
  Children are not just small adults, and streets should be designed to reflect their unique needs and experiences. This info brief outlines why communities must design walking and biking routes with children in mind and offers three strategies for planners and engineers to create safer, more accessible paths for youth.

Improving School Zone Safety

West Valley City, UT. Source: Mike Cynecki

School zones, typically spanning the length of school property, are convergence points where people walking, biking, riding a bus and traveling by private vehicle all converge. It’s an opportunity to create a culture for safety and support students arriving on-time and ready to learn.

• Adult School Crossing Guard Guide
  Adult school crossing guards play a key role in keeping kids safe during their trip to school. This guide gives an overview of federal standards and recommendations for crossing guard programs and shares examples of how different states and communities put these practices into action.
• Re-envisioning School Streets: Creating More Space for Children and Families
  Making more space around schools can help children and families travel more safely and comfortably. This info brief shares ways communities have changed streets near schools to support walking and biking. It includes examples, tips for choosing what works in different settings, and short case studies from schools across the country.

Planning for Automated Driving

Bordering streets and school campuses have unique characteristics that need to be integrated into the development of fully automated driving systems.

• Ten Actions Needed by Developers Before Deployment of Automated Driving Systems Around Schools
  This companion to Considerations for Deploying Automated Driving Systems Around Schools outlines ten steps developers of automated driving systems should take to reduce risks and improve safety near schools.
• Considerations for Deploying Automated Driving Systems Around Schools
  Automated vehicles are becoming more common, and school zones bring special safety challenges. This white paper summarizes the risks automated driving systems face near schools and shares ideas for improving technology, policies, and street design to keep students safe.

Getting to the School Bus

Source: NHTSA Image Library

School bus riders and their families are also pedestrians as they walk to and from bus stops and wait for the bus.

• Selecting School Bus Stop Locations
  Bus stop locations matter because they affect how students get to the stop and how safe they are while waiting. This resource gives school transportation staff and administrators guidance on choosing safe bus stop locations and supporting safe walking routes for students.
• Safe Steps to the School Bus Stop: How Parents Can Encourage Safe Walking
  This resource builds on Teaching Children to Walk Safely as They Grow and Develop and offers caregivers additional tips for teaching safe walking skills to and from the school bus.

Supporting Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities may face physical, sensory, cognitive, or social barriers when walking, biking, or rolling to school. Thoughtful planning, strong partnerships, and meaningful student involvement can help make travel safer, more inclusive, and more empowering for all students.

• Inclusive, Student-Centered Walk Audits: A Guide to Partnering with High School Students with Disabilities to Address Barriers to Mobility
  Walk audits help uncover both visible and invisible barriers students with disabilities face while traveling to school. This guide offers a step-by-step approach to partner with students in identifying challenges and turning their insights into meaningful improvements.
• Creating Connections: Opportunities for Safe Routes to School Programs to Support High School Students with Disabilities
  Collaboration between SRTS programs and transition assistance programs can help high school students with disabilities travel safely and independently. This info brief explains how disabilities can affect travel, how federal education policies relate to transportation, and opportunities for SRTS programs to partner with transition support programs.
• Involving Students with Disabilities in SRTS
  Safe Routes to School programs play an important role in helping children with disabilities walk and bike to school. This resource shares strategies and examples to help schools and SRTS organizers include and support students with disabilities in planning, events, and activities.

Building on the Federal SRTS Program

Safe Routes to School National Course in Lenexa, KS. Source: Mike Cynecki

The Federal Safe Routes to School program began with inclusion in 2005 Federal Transportation Law. From 2006 – 2016, the National Center for Safe Routes to School served as Federal Highway Administration’s Clearinghouse for the Safe Routes to School Program. In its role providing technical assistance, marketing, student travel data collection to State and local SRTS programs, it developed three seminal reports that both served to monitor the Federal program’s progress and point towards important opportunities for expansion.

• Advancing Safe Walking and Bicycling for Youth
• Advancing Transportation and Health: Approaches from the Federal Safe Routes to School Program That Offer Broad Application
• Creating Healthier Generations: A Look at 10 Years of the Federal SRTS Program