AUSTIN (KXAN) — In the spirit of National Bike and Roll to School Day, the City of Austin’s Safe Routes to School Program is hosting a bike-to-school event on Wednesday morning for students at Cowan Elementary.
It’s been eight years since Austin started its Safe Routes to School Program and officials say it has addressed about 10% of the barriers students face to get to schools across the city.
A look back at the last 8 years
Voters in Austin approved the 2016 mobility bond which included $27.5 million for projects that address the barriers associated with a safe route to schools. The goal of the Safe Routes program is to increase the number of kids who walk or bike to school each day.
Between 2017 and 2019, the city conducted walk-audits at 137 elementary and middle schools and found 4,654 barriers across the schools. The barriers range in need from things like a new bike lane to a new sidewalk.
You can find a full list of problems at your child’s school, and the recommendations from the city on its website. The city used cost data in 2019 to figure out it would cost $825 million to fix every identified barrier. That number has gotten even closer to a billion dollars as prices continue to rise.
Coleen Gentles, the program’s infrastructure manager, says the city has used about $25 million of its 2016 bond money and has completed projects across the city to fix 468 barriers. Not every school has been touched, but Gentles said it is a goal to have at least one barrier addressed at every school identified in the 2019 report.
So far, the city has completed projects to address some barriers at 112 schools, although some of those include high school and charter schools, Gentles said. In 2020, the city passed another mobility bond that allotted the program an additional $20 million for new safe route projects.
Is the program working?
The main goal of the Safe Routes to School program is to increase the number of kids walking or biking to school. Gentles said they are receiving positive feedback from the community and schools, and are seeing an uptick in foot traffic at school crosswalks.
“When we put in new sidewalks and bike lanes we are seeing an increase in walking and biking just from the anecdotes I’ve been hearing. My favorite stories are from those who say, ‘We did it for the first time ever,’” Gentles explained.