Howard Krepack

Safe routes to schools

Avid bicyclist, leads the bicycle accident practice at Gordon, Edelstein, Krepack, Grant, Felton & Goldstein, LLP, Aug 16, 11.

Tagged with walkability, safety, children, bikeability, schools

Next time you pass by one of our community’s schools, take a look at the surrounding streets and one sobering realization will strike you: the streets around our schools are unsafe. You’ll probably witness students hurrying across five- or six-lane roads, only to reach sidewalks where they must dodge cars whipping into the school parking lot.

Or you’ll see deserted sidewalks and lines of cars driven by parents rightfully ambivalent about letting their children walk or bike to school.

These conditions are the result of decades of car-centric planning that have made our streets unsafe for walking and bicycling and restricted our choices of transportation.

It is no wonder, given the hazards children confront while walking or biking to school, that only 15 percent of children who live within a two-mile radius of their school walk or bike there. Thirty years ago, that figure was 60 percent. Students going to school in disadvantaged communities face the most hazardous conditions. At the same time, one in five children is now considered overweight or obese.

Our community and our children deserve better.

The Safe Routes to School program, along with local non-profits, is working to change these conditions. Funded by national and state set-asides, the program’s goal is to make walking and biking to schools safer, giving children and their parents a safe and healthy transportation alternative.

Full Story: Krepack: It’s Past Time to Invest in Safe Routes to Schools
Source: Streetsblog Los Angeles, August 11, 2011

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