Side connection (easement) to Dilworth Elementary School and Park from Westminster Avenue, Salt Lake City

Dilworth Elementary School is located on a major street in Salt Lake City.  In my writings about "safe routes to schools," I do suggest that schools be located on major streets, to better accommodate transportation demand, rather than overtaxing neighborhood streets with school drop off and pick up traffic.

But main streets with lots of traffic can also be difficult places for pedestrians (although not in this particular instance).  Still, traffic is traffic, and the more traffic there is, the less willing people are to walk and bike.

I also recommend "school transportation demand management plans," but rarely are they developed.

-- "International Walk and Bike to School Day: Wednesday October 2nd, 2019," 2019

When I did a bike and pedestrian plan in 2010, the state Safe Routes to School coordinator suggested a way to improve connections to schools so that children wouldn't have to walk the long way around to access their school from their neighborhood was to buy strategically placed houses, install a sidewalk and incorporate an easement for it, and then put the house back on the market.

The auto industry has promoted drive to school for almost 100 years.

Drive children to school ad, Chevrolet, Saturday Evening Post Magazine, March 3, 1923.

I don't know if that's exactly what happened here, but it's an example of the concept.  (The school site was once exclusively a park, and many of the park functions remain, so it's possible this side access connection has existed for some time.)

Interestingly, they've furthered the "transportation demand management" element of this access point by setting up a "no parking school zone" on both sides of the access point, presumably for school pick up and drop off without having to go out to the main street.


(Although to best work, it'd need a small layby cul-de-sac like treatment so cars could easily turn around.)

I am not a big fan of the orange colored street crossing flags that people are supposed to wave so that drivers don't hit them, when they are crossing the street.

But some of the flags here are branded as being provided by the City Council, which I think is smart, as an example of branding and identity systems.

---

The biggest problem with walk and bike to school planning is that for the most part, there isn't planning for it.  School districts typically are only required to plan for school bus transportation.

A few school districts, like Boulder Valley School District in Colorado, have planners in the transportation office dedicated to sustainable mobility. 

So it should be no surprise that some of the BVSD elementary schools have greater than 50% participation in walking and biking to school.

That's one of my biggest takeaways on this issue, require schools to do what I call balanced transportation planning, and you'll get a lot more walking and biking to school.

It'd be best to do this as part of state-level legislation, but individual school districts wouldn't be precluded from acting on their own.

A great resource is the State of Washington DOT manual, School Walk and Bike Routes: A Guide for Planning and Improving Walk and Bike to School Options for Students. One of its points is that improvements for walking and biking to school also contribute positively to neighborhood sustainable mobility goals and objectives.

The State of Washington doesn't exactly mandate balanced transportation planning for schools, but they come closest as possible with the "carrot" approach. First, they require all K-5 schools, public and private, provide walk to school maps. Second, they recommend but do not require the creation of school district traffic safety committees, involving school, streets, and police planners, along with parents. Third, they allow school districts to spend transportation monies on non-school bus forms of transportation.


Typically SRTS programs focus on elementary schools and sometimes middle schools, while high schools are not addressed.

Yet the number of adolescent injuries and deaths related to traffic safety remain persistently high. Therefore, SRTS and traffic safety programs need to be provided to all school aged populations, including high schools.

Only a few school districts seem to create walk to school maps for middle and senior high schools.Seattle does. So does the Palo Alto School District in California, and a few others.

Montgomery County, Maryland schools has a campaign targeting teens with pedestrian-positive messaging called You Only Live Once.