[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE FEDERAL SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL PROGRAM
=======================================================================
(110-75)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 2, 2007
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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38-250 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2007
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, JOHN L. MICA, Florida
Vice Chair DON YOUNG, Alaska
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
Columbia WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
JERROLD NADLER, New York VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
CORRINE BROWN, Florida STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
BOB FILNER, California RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi JERRY MORAN, Kansas
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland GARY G. MILLER, California
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania Carolina
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
RICK LARSEN, Washington TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts SAM GRAVES, Missouri
JULIA CARSON, Indiana BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York Virginia
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois TED POE, Texas
DORIS O. MATSUI, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
NICK LAMPSON, Texas CONNIE MACK, Florida
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii York
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota Louisiana
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
JOHN J. HALL, New York VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
JERRY McNERNEY, California
LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California
(ii)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York DON YOUNG, Alaska
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
JULIA CARSON, Indiana GARY G. MILLER, California
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York Carolina
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina Virginia
MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JERRY MCNERNEY, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
BOB FILNER, California TED POE, Texas
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois Louisiana
DORIS O. MATSUI, California JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa, Vice Chair MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota (Ex Officio)
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vi
TESTIMONY
Bricker, Scott, Interim Executive Director, Bicycle
Transportation Alliance, Portland, Oregon...................... 5
Hubsmith, Deb, Director, Safe Routes to School National
Partnership, Fairfax, California............................... 5
Koch, Lisa, Coordinator, Kansas Safe Routes to School, Topeka,
Kansas......................................................... 5
Marchetti, Lauren, Director, National Center for Safe Routes to
School, Chapel Hill, North Carolina............................ 5
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona.............................. 36
Napolitano, Hon. Grace F., of California......................... 38
Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota............................ 39
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Bricker, Scott................................................... 43
Hubsmith, Deborah A.............................................. 52
Koch, Lisa....................................................... 69
Marchetti, Lauren................................................ 93
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Bricker, Scott, Interim Executive Director, Bicycle
Transportation Alliance, Portland, Oregon, responses to
questions from Rep. Napolitano................................. 48
Hubsmith, Deb, Director, Safe Routes to School National
Partnership, Fairfax, California, responses to questions from
Rep. Napolitano................................................ 64
Marchetti, Lauren, Director, National Center for Safe Routes to
School, Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
Response to request from Rep. Coble............................ 111
Responses to questions from Rep. Napolitano.................... 112
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
HEARING ON THE FEDERAL SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL PROGRAM
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Tuesday, October 2, 2007
House of Representatives
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Peter
A. DeFazio [chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. DeFazio. The Subcommittee will come to order as soon as
I turn on my microphone.
Today, the subject matter is a hearing on the Federal Safe
Routes to School program. Coming down the hall, I thought we
had created a massive amount of interest when I saw the police
and crowd, but I find that was a scandal instead of something
that is substantial in contributing to the future of our
Country.
This program, which the Chairman of the Committee took a
particular hand in creating, in my opinion, and I believe
probably others share this sentiment, can address a number of
problems simultaneously in the United States. We have a
childhood obesity problem. If we can change the habits of
children and make them less sedentary, that will lead to a
life-long improvement in health. It is solving problems for
children who are today, already, riding their bikes or walking
to school, who are not the new entrants in the program, but who
are doing it in areas that are not safe.
In my hometown of Eugene we have had one fatality of a
small young boy who was riding his bike and crossing a four-
lane road, and the car closest to him stopped, and as he was
obscured riding past that, a young driver who was speeding past
that car in the outer lane killed the child. We had another
incident of a child in the crosswalk who was seriously injured.
And I know this is repeated around the Country. There are
obviously improvements we can make in the routes that our
children might use to go to school, in addition to getting more
children to choose to walk or ride bikes to school.
So I think this sort of interim hearing on what progress we
are making, what problems there might be with the program will
help direct its future.
With that, I would turn to the Ranking Member, Mr. Duncan,
for his comments.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all of
the witnesses that have come here to testify this morning and
thank you for calling this hearing.
The topic of today's hearing is the Safe Routes to School
program that was created in SAFETEA-LU. This program was
intended to pay for infrastructure improvements around
elementary and middle schools to make it safer and easier for
students to walk or bike to school. Funding from this program
can also be used to pay for non-infrastructure activities that
encourage walking and biking to school.
Where it makes sense, I think it is great if children are
able to walk or bike to school. I think the goals and
objectives of this program are very admirable, and I think we
can all agree that childhood obesity is a major problem in our
society and that any program that enables children to be more
active is a good program.
Some people have raised concerns about whether these
activities should be funded through the Federal Highway program
and the Highway Trust Fund because, before the end of 2009, the
account of the Highway Trust Fund will run out of money. In
fiscal year 2009, the Safe Routes to School program will
receive $183 million. In that same year, we allocate only $90
million for highway improvements on high-risk rural roads, and
we set aside only $100 million for emergency highway repairs to
respond to natural disasters and disasters like the collapse of
the I-35 bridge in Minnesota.
I think the Safe Routes to School program is a wonderful
and worthwhile program, but we need to make sure that we don't
shortchange other programs that would perhaps save even more
lives.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. With that, I would see if other
Members have opening statements.
Ms. Matsui?
Ms. Matsui. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this
important hearing. I just want to first start out by saying
that Safe Routes to School is a wonderful and a worthwhile new
program that Congress authorized in SAFETEA-LU.
In my district, in Sacramento, we are having great success
with this program. For example, one of our school districts has
created a program--and I think this has happened in other
States too--called Walking Wednesdays. It encourages the kids
and the parents to walk or bike to school together. It
encourages more family time, which I guess all of us know there
is not enough of, but also promotes a better appreciation for
the healthiness of walking and encourages alternate modes of
transportation. These are all lessons that can be used later in
life and can help build healthier communities.
I am looking forward to working on these issues with you,
Mr. Chairman. I am also looking forward to hearing from today's
witnesses. I thank you and I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Mr. Coble.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief.
I want to welcome the panelists, especially my fellow North
Carolinian, Ms. Marchetti, and I want to associate with the
remarks, Mr. Chairman, of the gentleman from Tennessee. I
believe the goals are indeed admirable, and I too look forward
to hearing the testimony today, and I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. With that, I would turn to the
Chairman of the Full Committee, Mr. Oberstar, the father of the
Safe Routes to School program. Or grandfather or whatever you
would like to be.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will take full
credit, responsibility, obligation, but that has to be shared
with so many dozens of others who were there at the creation of
this initiative.
I thank you for allowing us to hold this hearing. And the
gentleman from Tennessee, who is ever so diligent in supporting
the activities of the Committee and for his ever-thoughtful
comments, thank you so very much.
Ms. Matsui, in whose city there is a very strong, very
effective Safe Routes to School program, on its way to being an
award-winning project with use of all of the initiatives, the
education, the traffic calming, the actual walking and cycling
to school, engaging parents, faculty, administration, and the
city engineering office as well. The program also works well
when the mayor of the community, Mayor Heather Fargo, in this
case, is strongly supportive. My hat is off to Sacramento and
to Portland and to so many other cities across the Country.
The real purpose of this hearing is to fulfill what I said
at the outset of the creation of the Safe Routes to School
initiative, is that it has to be accountable; that we have to
take measure of the program in its initial stages, halfway
through, and then at the end of the authorization period, when,
on the eve of 2009, we will be writing a new transportation
bill under the leadership of the gentleman from Oregon.
I said this is a new initiative. It is one that has great
hope, great promise for the future, and for that reason we have
to hold it accountable and we have to review its progress, make
sure that it is achieving the goals set out and, if not, to
adjust that program.
Well, I am quite satisfied that not only are the goals of
Safe Routes to School being achieved, but exceeded. For that,
at the outset, I want to thank Tim Arnade, who is at the
Federal Highway Administration, the national director of the
Safe Routes to School program for the U.S. Department of
Transportation. Mr. Arnade put himself, Mr. Chairman, heart and
soul, full energy into the development of the guidelines,
working with State coordinators for Safe Routes to School
across the Country as they were designated by each State;
developed a comprehensive plan, a model for each of the States
to follow; and then, when all the coordinators were designated,
he gathered them, had a conference, got the best ideas, best
practices, and moved this initiative forward.
We didn't ask him to testify; that should come at a later
date in the program. We should hear from those who are on the
firing line.
I also, at this point, want to thank our Safe Routes
coordinator in Minnesota, Kristie Billiar. She is the best
thing the Minnesota Department of Transportation has done over
the last three years. Everything else has gone to hell in a
hand basket over there; the bridge collapsed, they can't get
their act together, can't pass an increase in the gas tax. But
they can do Safe Routes to School, and they have done it
exceedingly well.
When I crafted this idea, it was following a presentation
by the Centers for Disease Control in March of 2000 on results
of a five year longitudinal study of obesity in America's
children. This study reported that, 40 years ago, 60 percent of
all children walked and biked to school; in 2000, less than 2
percent; that, further, 25 percent of children were clinically
obese, that is, more than 30 percent above their ideal body
weight; that 60 percent of children 15 and under were
clinically seriously overweight or verging on obesity; that 65
percent of adult Americans were clinically overweight or obese;
that 75 percent of trips by children 15 and under were by
vehicle, motor vehicle, to school, from school; that twice a
day air quality is severely deteriorated at school areas
because idling of buses and cars and SUVs and the rest.
There were many other disturbing data, but the worst of all
was that Type II diabetes had doubled in five years among
children 15 and under. No period in health statistics had seen
such a dramatic increase in disease, a preventable disease,
largely.
So I gathered a group of enthusiasts for cycling. Actually,
I went out and did a ride on my bike that afternoon. It was a
short session that day and I went out and I meditated on the
issue, called a group of cycling/pedestrian advocates together
in my office and I read those statistics to them and I said I
have a plan to fix it, I am going to call it Safe Routes to
School. Someone raised their hand and said it is a great idea,
it has already been done in England. I said, well, it is still
a pretty good idea, even though the Brits already did it.
They cited to me the study which had been completed three
years--more than a study, an experiment--three years
sustainable transportation, and in those three years the Brits
had really changed habits of young people; created Walking
School Buses. They did infrastructure changes at intersections:
widened the crossings, brighter striping; as I said, Walking
School Buses for children, wearing the same clothing or hats.
They engaged parents and school administrators, and in the
third year of the program more bicycles were sold in the U.K.
than automobiles. Well, I am not out to sell more bikes than
automobiles with this program, but, in fact, that is what is
happening. Last year, more bicycles were sold in the United
States than automobiles.
So we took that idea, we had--to shorten the story--engaged
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to commit to
two grants of $50,000 each, one to support a principally
walking program in Arlington, Massachusetts, and the other
principally a bicycling program in Marin County, California.
Thanks to the energy, enthusiasm, and creativity of Deb
Hubsmith, that Marin County program was a resounding success,
and the same in Arlington, Massachusetts, where they revived
school crossing guards that had long been dormant in that city;
and in both places lessons learned, lessons applied resulted in
the draft legislation and finally inclusion in SAFETEA-LU, and
here we are with an enormously successful initiative.
You have many opportunities in the legislative arena to do
good of one kind or another. Many of us get an amendment passed
and occasionally we get a bill passed. But rarely do you have
an opportunity like this, to change the habits of an entire
generation, and that is what we can do with Safe Routes to
School. We can save an entire generation, and those to follow
them, from childhood diabetes, from obesity, into safer
walking, bicycling habits; change the safety parameters in the
school arena. And we are seeing the benefits, seeing the
results, and seeing the success of those initiatives with the
program on which we will hear a full report today.
Over 700 schools in just the first two years of the program
have initiated programs and had reports and success. Safe
Routes to School is now in all 50 States and the District of
Columbia. Law enforcement, families, children, school boards,
city governments, all are engaged. We have a Safe Routes to
School clearinghouse with Lauren Marchetti at the University of
North Carolina School of Public Health, and serving as a center
for sharing information, best practices, and making sure that
information gets out quickly, Safe Routes Task Force, headed by
Deb Hubsmith. All are working together, sharing their
experiences, and the best result of all is that we are seeing
success in reducing Type II diabetes, high cholesterol and
blood pressure among school children.
I look forward to the testimony, which I have read already,
frankly; I stayed up until the early hours of the morning
making sure I read every page of it, and I am very excited
about the report we will receive this morning.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Are there other Members who wish to make an opening
statement?
[No response.]
Mr. DeFazio. Seeing none, we will then proceed to the
witnesses and we will begin with Ms. Marchetti.
TESTIMONY OF LAUREN MARCHETTI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR
SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL, CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA; DEB
HUBSMITH, DIRECTOR, SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP,
FAIRFAX, CALIFORNIA; SCOTT BRICKER, INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
BICYCLE TRANSPORTATION ALLIANCE, PORTLAND, OREGON; AND LISA
KOCH, COORDINATOR, KANSAS SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL, TOPEKA, KANSAS
Ms. Marchetti. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee,
thank you for inviting me to testify. It is an honor and
privilege to be here before you to discuss this wonderful
program. I also want to thank Congressman Coble for his kind
statement of support. But I particularly want to thank the
Committee and Chairman Oberstar, and his staff in particular,
for their tremendous leadership in making this a reality.
The Safe Routes to School concept has been described as
small steps, perhaps, but millions of them and all in the right
direction. It is a simple and powerful concept. Where it is
safe, encourage children to enjoy the walk to school as
generations before them did. Where it is not safe, bring
together the community partners and resources to make it safe.
Unfortunately, in some places, children are walking and biking
to school in unsafe conditions. Often, this is in urban, low
resource areas. These children deserve better.
Housed within the University of North Carolina Highway
Safety Research Center, the National Center works with the
Federal Government, all 50 States, the District of Columbia,
and local programs throughout the Country to help implement the
Safe Routes to School program. We are pleased that our partners
include the American Association of State Transportation
Officials, America Walks, the Governors Highway Safety
Association, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and
Toole Design.
The clearinghouse serves three main functions. Build
capacity. This is done largely with training and technical
support. Promote demand. I will talk to you later about the
wonderful things that Walk to School Day is accomplishing. And,
finally, understand what works. This is very important to us.
Successful programs and strategies must be identified and
shared so all schools can benefit.
As Chairman Oberstar was saying, we are on the convergence
of major issues that Safe Routes to School programs can
address. The obesity epidemic and related illnesses that we are
experiencing have reached our children, leading public health
professionals to warn that this generation of children may be
the first not to live to be as old as their parents. Now, that
stuns a lot of people when they hear that.
Concerns about traffic congestion, the environment, and our
dependency on foreign fuel have spurred many to look for
alternatives. Walking is the form of transportation and
physical activity that is the easiest to do and most affordable
for all. As more and more adults and children seek this
ability, we must be proactive in our efforts to make these
modes safe and accessible.
With over 30 years experience in the transportation safety
field, I have seen a lot of programs. Yet, I am amazed at how
quickly so many States have embraced Safe Routes to School, and
at the commitment and enthusiasm of the State coordinators. You
will hear that spirit when Lisa Koch testifies shortly.
I would like to make five points. One, the Federal program
is going strong. They had three requirements: to establish the
Safe Routes to School program, establish a clearinghouse, and
create a national task force. I am here to inform you that FHWA
has moved aggressively to accomplish all three. As Chairman
Oberstar mentioned, they appointed a senior level employee, Tim
Arnade, to serve as the contact person within six weeks of
passage of SAFETEA-LU. This was crucial to the speed with which
the program advanced. Within two months, the first two years of
funding were issued to the States. By the time the program was
one year old, 13 States had announced funding.
The clearinghouse was established in May 2006, and we too
understood speed was important. Within three months we had a
comprehensive web site, we had convened a meeting of the State
coordinators, we started providing free training to each State,
and we had established a tracking program.
The national task force was established in October 2006
and, as a member of that organization, I can testify that we
have already met three times, about to have our fourth meeting,
and we are working hard to get our report out.
My second point is that States are engaged and running with
the program. Two key provisions made that happen: the
requirement for full-time coordinators and the flexibility in
allowing States to use a variety of approaches. Funds are also
reaching the communities and we are seeing early successes. As
of July, 40 States had completed or were actively involved in
soliciting local Safe Routes to School program applications.
Data is also being collected. We have set up a tracking
system. We are going to be looking at programs, and the
resulting database will support national level and overall
program evaluation. We will be able to see what is working and
share that information quickly.
I would like to end my testimony with a success that gives
me particular joy. Tomorrow, October 3rd, is International Walk
to School Day. I am very proud to say that that started in the
United States in 1997. The Brits joined us later. This year, it
will be celebrated in 42 countries. The importance to me about
this is that it is an event that has caught on in all 50
States, with over 3,000 schools registered this year. And it
isn't just an event. When they do the walk to school activity,
they go on to start programs and get engaged and remember how
much they used to enjoy walking to school, at least the adults
when they were young.
In conclusion, I want to say that the Safe Routes to School
program is off to a great start because of parents and schools
that want better for their children, advocates who are
dedicating their time to where their hearts are--and you will
hear that in Deb Hubsmith's testimony, I am sure--and the State
coordinators, like Lisa Koch, for whom this is not just a job,
but a way to improve the lives of school children.
I would like to thank the Chairman, Ranking Member, and
Members of the Subcommittee for this opportunity to tell you
the wonderful things I am seeing out there.
I want to leave you with one statement from a coordinator
in a State that is dealing with some rough economic times. In
an application for an award that we are going to be giving out
soon, he said, often, because neighborhood schools are the
single remaining institution in blighted areas around which a
community can rally, Safe Routes to School is the catalyst that
engages neighborhoods again and empowers them, through success,
to stem decline and recreate community.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Ms. Hubsmith.
Ms. Hubsmith. Yes, good morning, Chairman Oberstar,
Chairman DeFazio, and Ranking Member Duncan, and Members of the
Committee. I am pleased to be here today to have the
opportunity to speak with you about the success of the Federal
Safe Routes to School program.
Overall, my assessment is that the program is doing
extremely well and is very popular. Still, there are some
things that Congress can do to improve its success, and I will
highlight those opportunities throughout my testimony.
I have been involved with Safe Routes to School programs
for nearly 10 years. In 1999, California passed the first
legislation to allow for a Safe Routes to School program, and
then, in the year 2000, as Chairman Oberstar mentioned, I had
the opportunity to help to manage a pilot program for the
National Highway Traffic Safeway Administration in Marin
County, California. We were asked by the Federal Government to
incorporate the five E's as part of our Safe Routes to School
program, recognizing that if you build it, they don't always
come. So in order to create a program, in order to change
people's behavior, you need to use a variety of techniques.
So our program used the 5 Es, starting off with Evaluation,
asking parents why they are driving their children to school
now and what it would take to change their behavior, and taking
initial baseline information; Engineering, taking a look at the
routes to schools and what could be changed, and then creating
priority lists and seeing what the city can do on their own
funding and what type of applications are needed from State or
Federal governments; Education, taking a look at traffic safety
and how we can improve that in the schools and on the streets;
Encouragement, activities like Walk to School Day; and then
Enforcement, working together with law enforcement.
So Safe Routes to School became a comprehensive program
that really brought the city and the school together and
directed the resources of these entities to make a difference.
It worked so well that when the Congress passed the Safe Routes
to School legislation, the Federal Highway Administration
created guidance recommending the 5 E's for Safe Routes to
School, and that has been a tenet for its success.
I went on to form the Safe Routes to School National
Partnership that is a network of more than 300 organizations
now, including the Institute for Transportation Engineers, the
American Association of School Administrators, Rails to Trails
Conservancy, and the League of American Bicyclists. We are
working to grow the Safe Routes to School movement, set best
practices, and to share information. We released this report
yesterday, Safe Routes to School: The State of the States, and
there are copies here that will be available for you to pick up
later if you are interested.
I would like to cover four points as to how Safe Routes to
School is succeeding. Number one, it is being proven that the
program is increasing walking and bicycling to school. In
California, where we have had a program now for six years. The
Department of Transportation released a study this January that
showed that at schools that received improvements, we increased
the number of children walking and bicycling in the range of 20
percent to 200 percent.
Secondly, Safe Routes to School builds important
partnerships, both at the State level and also at the local
level. It brings together partnerships like the Health
Department, law enforcement, and the Departments of
Transportation and Education, partners that may not have always
worked together before.
Our friends in Knoxville, Tennessee report that the
Regional Transportation Planning Organization is particularly
proud of the fact that they have worked with the Bearden
Elementary School and the Beaumont Elementary School to run
active Safe Routes to School programs, and they are now
applying for Federal funds to expand to three more schools. And
they are particularly proud of the fact of how they brought
together these diverse partners.
Thirdly, Safe Routes to School is reaching low income
communities. By providing the 100 percent funding for the
program, it allows for communities that may not have the
resources to apply for grants to do so, and the Active Living
Resource Center, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
is making an effort to work with DOTs to have that happen. It
is being successful.
In addition, another success is that Safe Routes to School
is leveraging additional funds. Foundations like the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, Bikes Belong Coalition, and the
Harvest Foundation have invested money to help make this
program succeed. In addition, thousands of parents give their
time, through Walking School Buses and other activities, in
order to make the program work. This adds value to the Federal
program.
There are three opportunities and challenges that I would
like to address where Congress can help. First, there is a
latent demand for the funding for this program. In most States,
we have seen way more requests than funding is available. In
fact, many times it is five times the amount of funding that is
available. In New Jersey, $74 million was requested for only
$4.15 million that was available.
Secondly, the Federal requirements for Safe Routes to
School reflect Title 23, and while it is extremely important to
have rigorous oversight for the expenditure of Federal funds,
many of these programs are very small in nature, and the
administrative fees and time it takes to implement them are
quite intense. It would be great if we could work together with
Congress to streamline these activities, because many of the
changes are taking place in an existing built environment and
result in educational programs.
Thirdly, we would like to work with you on improved data
collection. We are very pleased that the National Center for
Safe Routes to School has developed parent-student collection
surveys, and these are good, but we would like to work with you
to improve the census questions, to have questions related to
school travel, and to fund the National Household Travel
Survey. In addition, as the State DOTs report information to
FHWA, we would like to have more information reported on
bicycle and pedestrian data and Safe Routes to School.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not address recent
criticisms that have been directed at the use of Federal
dollars for Safe Routes to School and other bicycle and
pedestrian programs. Please let me point out that the funding
for this program represents only 0.2 percent of the overall
funding in the Federal transportation bill. Our children are
worth 0.2 percent of the Federal transportation funds.
Secondly, many communities report that 20 percent to 30
percent of the morning traffic is parents driving their kids to
school. This is helping to relieve that traffic congestion. In
addition, municipal costs are rising for school bus
transportation, so many States are cutting this. We need to
provide a way for these kids that are now on the streets to get
to school safely.
As was mentioned by the Chairman, U.S. activity among
children has plummeted, and now one third of our U.S. children
are overweight and obese. That is 25 million children. And
there are huge costs for the United States for this. In
addition, walking and biking to school reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and it reduces energy, and these are priorities for
our Nation.
Safe Routes to School is creating a stronger America, a
healthier America, and I would like to thank Congress for
making the opportunity available for every family and every
child to make a difference in their health and the health of
this Nation. Safe Routes to School is a program the United
States can be proud of. Thank you very much. I look forward to
working with you to strengthen the program and to answering
your questions.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Mr. Bricker.
Mr. Bricker. Thank you, Chair DeFazio, Chair Oberstar,
Ranking Member Duncan, and Members of the Committee. My name is
Scott Bricker and I am with the Bicycle Transportation Alliance
from Oregon. I am very pleased to be here, very excited to be
up here testifying. I am hoping to provide just a small, brief
snapshot of what is going on in Oregon, successes and
challenges that one State is facing.
In 1996, I started working on youth mobility issues as part
of my master's degree at Portland State University in
transportation planning. For two years I rode bicycles with
children to school, after school, and worked with them on what
types of transportation needs they needed and had.
In 1998, I worked with the Bicycle Transportation Alliance
to write a grant to ODOT, the Transportation Safety Division,
to get money, actually FHWA money, to start a bicycle safety
education program. In the last eight years, that program has
taught over 40,000 children a 10 hour traffic safety course
riding bicycles on the street.
In Oregon, we have worked to be part of the National Safe
Routes to School partnership and I have been on the board of
that organization with Deb. We passed Oregon Safe Routes to
School laws in 2001, 2005, and 2007, and in Oregon, recently,
we created a Safe Routes to School advisory committee, as well,
to help write rules in the Oregon law, but also mostly because
of the Federal program.
In Oregon, communities up and down the State have been
working on and grappling with issues about bicycling, walking
to school, and the children. In Eugene and Springfield, the
Lane Transit District has been working to try and increase
safety of children and get bus passes into kids' hands, trying
to increase walking and biking to school.
In Albany, one community volunteer, Jim Lawrence, has been
working with the community to grapple people to work with this
issue of congestion in front of his schools, and in Corvallis,
the Benton County Health Coalition has been working to try and
do the same.
In Bend, the Public Works Department created Oregon's first
Safe Routes to School plan in Bear Creek Elementary School,
working with the principal and a couple parents, and in Ashland
and Medford the communities have been working with their
traffic safety committees in the community to try and handle
this issue.
Finally, in Portland, we have been working for the last
four years to try and increase Safe Routes to Schools.
In all of these programs the community has been really the
group that has been leading this effort. In fact, in none of
these communities has the school been the place that has been
leading this effort. At the same time, Oregon spends $300
million a year on school bus transportation. Today, Oregon
receives about $1 million a year from the Safe Routes to School
program. And, in Oregon, only 30 percent of the kids actually
take the bus.
What is the problem here? The Federal Safe Routes to School
program has given the impetus, with only $1 million a year, to
help form these coalitions, to help actually bring these people
together to create school travel plans, to create strategies,
and to apply to receive Federal Safe Routes to School funds. In
fact, in Oregon, in 2005, we passed a law stating that to get
Safe Routes to School funds you would have to have a school
transportation plan or some kind of strategy; not a very
formalized plan, but a strategy, a discussion between the city
and the schools or the county and the schools.
The Federal program has been successful in Oregon because
it has helped leverage real partnerships; it has helped bring
me out here, and this is my first time testifying in front of
Congress, and I really am excited and slightly nervous to be up
here, but you have the potential to have more and more people
who have never been here before because of this program.
Yesterday we had a press conference with children who came with
bikes and were walking, had a chance to have a civics lessons.
Kids who, in the past, were not empowered to bicycle and walk
to school today are being so.
I believe that, for Oregon, the Federal Safe Routes to
School program has had some very specific positive impacts.
One, it has been the impetus to help us create our Safe Routes
to School Advisory Committee, which really is a coalition and
has, for the first time, Department of Education, School
transportation people in the same room with ODOT, with the
transportation department. Two, as I had mentioned, it is
creating partnerships between health departments, between
cities, between schools, between advocates like myself,
parents, safety advocates, a wide range of people that have
never worked before together in this way. And, three, it has
real money. Even at $1 million a year, we can build crosswalks,
we can build curb extensions, we can build meeting islands, and
we can also provide safety education to children in Oregon. We
can promote bicycling and walking to school and active, healthy
lifestyles, and those things are happening.
There are some problems or some concerns that we have,
stumbling blocks about the programs. Our stumbling block is the
construction requirements that are required by FHWA. With $1
million a year, and perhaps only $700,000 a year, we are
encouraging communities in Oregon to only submit small
applications, between $35,000 and $250,000 per school. Two
hundred fifty thousand is one traffic signal. To have to go
through the Federal hoops, right now, we haven't even figured
out in Oregon. We are encouraging bundling of projects; we are
encouraging a streamlining process and seeing if there is any
way we can streamline the evaluation project. If you are going
to build a $2,000 speed bump, you shouldn't have to have a
$10,000 administrative fee.
At the same time, the promotion and education programs have
already been funded, and those programs are moving forward.
The other thing that we are stumbling with is the issue of
supplanting ongoing costs. We would like to be able to fund
ongoing bicycle safety education, but we are not exactly sure
if this program will let us do it for more than one or two
years, and that is something that we are working on.
In summary, in Oregon, the demand greatly outpaces the cost
of available revenue and ODOT is doing an excellent, in the
Transportation Safety Division, managing this program. At the
same time, planning does take time. With only two years after
the Federal program has really been released, communities are
still trying to put their plans together. So we are excited to
move this forward and have more and more schools submit
programs and plans to you all.
So I encourage you and I look forward to working with you
all to increase this funding in the future to keep this program
going and to let us continue this great work. Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Bricker.
Ms. Koch.
Ms. Koch. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Duncan, and Members of the Committee. My name is Lisa Koch, and
I am the Coordinator of the Kansas Safe Routes to School
program at the Kansas Department of Transportation in Topeka.
In addition to my oral testimony today, please accept my
written testimony, which I have submitted for the record.
Thank you for holding this timely hearing on the status of
the Federal Safe Routes to School program, which was funded
through the passage of SAFETEA-LU in 2005. Since the passage of
SAFETEA-LU, the 50 State Departments of Transportation and the
Department of Transportation for the District of Columbia have
been working to create Safe Routes to School programs that meet
the needs of their varied constituents. My comments today will
focus on the Safe Routes to School program that has been
created at KDOT as an example of how the Federal guidance for
the Safe Routes to School program has been interpreted at the
State level.
KDOT started their Safe Routes to School program in early
2006, just months after receiving guidance from FHWA. The
leadership at KDOT supported this program from the beginning
and, knowing that there wouldn't be much time to prove its
viability during the life of SAFETEA-LU, moved aggressively to
start their program. After a public information campaign and an
application process, KDOT selected its first 24 Safe Routes to
School projects in October of 2006, just six months after
starting our program. In the year since that time, KDOT has
worked aggressively to educate the public about the holistic
nature of the Safe Routes to School program and has selected
over 20 more projects in its second year of funding.
The flexibility of the program guidance which FHWA provided
for the Safe Routes to School program has allowed us to fund
over 10 non-traditional recipients of transportation funding,
including school districts and non-profit organizations. The
flexibility of the guidance has also allowed us to
appropriately fund programs at all levels. Our smallest
programs focus on single school initiatives where there are
specific traffic or safety concerns that are not allowing
children to walk or bicycle to school. Our largest programs are
being implemented with two of the metropolitan planning
organizations in Kansas. These programs focus on regional
programming such as Walking School Bus programs and safety
education.
When I speak to local communities, they have found that the
Safe Routes to School program works. A specific interaction
that reminded me of the importance of these types of programs
occurred when I met with leaders from a small town in
Southeastern Kansas two weeks ago. I asked them why they needed
a program like Safe Routes to School, why it was important to
them. They said that their city of around 1500 people was on
the verge of dying. Their population was aging and their
children were leaving for college or better opportunities.
Special programs like Safe Routes to School would help enable
city leadership to encourage families to move back to this town
to raise their children.
Increased livability factors would encourage industries to
locate near this town, creating more jobs and opportunities for
folks to live there. Having a more walkable community would
allow their aging population to maintain their independence,
instead of perhaps having to leave their home and their town
for care facilities.
In my opinion, rural communities are where this program is
having the most impact. The programs that occur in the cities
and in suburban areas are doing well and they are very
necessary, and they have been very successful in Kansas. But
the $250,000 in a city that we provide, if there is 100,000
people or so, it isn't having a very big impact on overall
traffic patterns. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars in a town
with a relatively small population has a massive lasting
effect; it has the type of impact that can galvanize an entire
town to change their future.
In my conversations with other Safe Routes to School
coordinators, there is agreement that the Safe Routes to School
program is working. They appreciate the flexible nature of the
program because it allows for creativity and for programs to
meet the needs of their constituents.
The common complaints from coordinators are that more
funding is needed to meet the needs of their applicants. In
Kansas, we turn down over half of applicants due to limited
funding, and we have very strict application requirements that
we get fantastic applications, and we have to turn down quite a
few.
Coordinators also think that the Federal aid requirements
are too extensive for such a low cost program. The small towns
that I work with do not have the staff to work through this
process; therefore, projects have to be let through the State
Department of Transportation, which extend the time line of
projects and make them more expensive. Also, these daunting
requirements cause some people not to apply for funds, those
programs that we are trying to target.
In closing, I would like to thank Chairman DeFazio for
providing me with the opportunity to testify today. On behalf
of the 51 Safe Routes to School programs, I would like to
publicly acknowledge the fantastic work of the Safe Routes to
School affiliated staff at the Federal Highway Administration
Headquarters and at the State divisions. I would also like to
acknowledge the impeccable work of Lauren and her staff at the
National Center for Safe Routes to School. The work that they
do in assisting the State coordinators is extraordinary and
will have a lasting effect on the Safe Routes to School
movement.
Again, thank you, and I would be happy to answer any
questions that you might have.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Ms. Koch.
We will now turn to the first round of questions.
Ms. Marchetti, one of the clearinghouse jobs is to develop
and share best practices to make certain States are using their
funding in the most effective way and we are not recreating the
wheel, so to speak, or the path, or whatever. Can you give us a
few examples of best practices that you have found that are
being replicated and working well?
Ms. Marchetti. We are in the process of collecting case
studies. We have 35 now that are going up on our website
probably within the week, and many of these involve looking at
how schools are reducing speeds, because the speed at which a
child is hit greatly influences whether or not they can survive
a crash. We are also looking at encouragement programs. We have
got documentation of a program in Tucson, for instance, that
through education was able to increase the walking and biking
to school by 300 percent.
The safety strategies are harder to evaluate, and that is
why we are very excited about this tracking program we are
setting up. We are hoping that the majority of States will get
their schools to collect both travel data and parent concern
data that will help us--and also what the strategies are, and
then we will be able to do supplemental evaluation so that we
can understand what works for safety. We feel confident we are
going to learn what works to encourage kids to walk and bike,
but we need to do very specific evaluations to understand what
are the strategies and what are the engineering treatments that
will be of most value. So it is an ongoing process, but we have
got some.
Mr. DeFazio. Great. We look forward to those new postings.
Ms. Hubsmith, you mentioned in your testimony about the
delay in project implementation after the grants are announced,
the problems with both administrative fees and the time
involved. Do you have any proposals on how to deal with that to
make it better?
Ms. Hubsmith. Thank you, Chairman DeFazio. One of the
possibilities might be to be able to set a threshold for a
certain amount of funding that if a project was $250,000 or
less, that there might be able to be a streamlined process for
implementation of those grant awards. My understanding is that
Title 23 requires about 12 different forms of paperwork that
need documentation related to archeological resources, noise,
dirt, a variety of different things. We believe that the
rigorous accountability for this program is extremely
important. It is also important to recognize that most of these
improvements are taking place in an existing built environment,
and that when it costs sometimes as much to do the
administrative fees as it does to implement something like a
speed bump, that we need to find a way to be more effective.
In addition, another technique that is being used is the
bundling of projects, and I believe that might be one of the
best practices that the national center may discover. I know
that the State of Massachusetts has worked to allow for one
contractor to implement their infrastructure projects
throughout the State, and for bundling them in that way they
have been able to reduce administrative fees per project and do
them overall. That may work in smaller States, but I don't see
that working in a State such as California, that is so big and
spread out. So some sort of changes to Title 23 would be
helpful, possibly related to the amount of funding that is
required if it is taking place in a built environment.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Mr. Bricker, you mentioned bundling also in your testimony.
Is there any particular difference? You heard Ms. Hubsmith
mention it can work, but in the larger States, with the
tremendous dispersion, perhaps not so well. What about the
Oregon experience? You mentioned that. They are a large land
area, too.
Mr. Bricker. Yes, thank you, Chairman DeFazio. We are a
large land area, especially in some areas not much population.
The bundling the way Oregon has proposed it, I had mentioned
that the Safe Routes Advisory Committee in Oregon had actually
recommended smaller projects, so we really are hoping, with
only $1 million a year, and maybe 70 percent of that for
infrastructure, was hoping to only fund smaller, $250,000
projects or less. So the idea of bundling was, within a
community, if you had applications for more than one school,
so, for example, if Eugene was going to apply for three or four
schools, each school might have $100,000 worth of improvements,
that they would try and bundle those applications into one
bunch so they could all be reviewed at once. So it was more of
community-by-community than it was the whole State with one
contractor. And that would really only work for the larger
communities, so for the smaller communities they would be
handicapped with this process, and, again, I do want to
emphasize the idea of a streamlining approach.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay.
Ms. Koch, on Kansas, obviously, you have a rural challenge
here. How well does the program work in these more rural areas
and what are the needs there that we could meet?
Ms. Koch. We are finding that this program is
extraordinarily successful in rural communities, which was a
surprise to us. The research that we have seen from past
programs funded through our past transportation funding, they
have all been suburban and urban. So this was kind of a new
opportunity for us to see if it works.
The most important thing we have had to do is make sure
that we are reaching to these communities. A lot of rural
communities all over the Country don't feel like Federal
funding is intended for them, so it was important for us to
make sure that they understood that we were helping them. We
wanted them to be participating. We took trainings to their
location; we didn't force them to go to the big cities to go to
trainings. We provided tons of technical assistance. We created
opportunities for them to start their program at a planning
process. If they have never done anything before, we would
provide them opportunities to plan using our funds. If they
have already had a planning process, they can go towards
implementation.
The most important thing that we have found with our rural
communities in Kansas is that our poverty rates are
extraordinarily high. They are as high as a lot of our inner
city areas in Kansas. So it is important that we are focusing
on these areas. They don't have the tax base to fix potholes,
let alone make improvements to make pedestrian areas safer.
We are also dealing with a lot of aging infrastructure. So
there are so many challenges in rural communities that can
really be benefitted by this program. Plus the fact that you
are dealing with a smaller area where people are wanting to
have their kids have great qualities of life; that is why they
live in these kinds of areas. The schools that I work with know
every single child and their parents on every street in the
community that they live, and this is the most important thing
that they can do for their kids, and they are overwhelmingly
supportive.
Mr. DeFazio. Great. Thank you. Thanks for that perspective.
Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
TEA-21 required that each State establish a coordinator for
bicycling and pedestrian activities. Have you seen any
overlapping between the coordinator for that and the
coordinator for the Safe Routes to School program? Are they
doing the same type of work?
Ms. Marchetti. I will be happy to address that first. I
find them to be partners. The ped-bike coordinators have been
in place for a while, they have a lot of understanding of how
to get things done in their States in the general area, and the
Safe Routes to School coordinators often work with the ped-bike
coordinators. I feel that the combination of interest and
passion enables both to progress even more. But I am seeing a
lot of working together and not any overlap that isn't
positive.
Mr. Duncan. Several years ago I joined with a Democratic
colleague and got a program started in the Department of
Education that we originally called the Smaller Schools
Initiative, and this was designed to give grants to communities
to try to help them keep smaller schools open that otherwise
would have had to close. The name of the program has been
changed and some things have been added to it, but it was my
belief then and concern that our schools were getting too big
and that, in big schools, young people were just numbers and
didn't have a chance to make ball teams or be presidents of
clubs or cheerleaders or whatever. And I had read that in 1930
the average size school in this Country had a little over 100
students. Now, of course, it is much, much bigger, and parents
keep demanding brand new schools, but then they generally make
those schools bigger and further away from students.
I am just wondering if there is not some way that--I think
a child is better off to go to school in an older building, as
long as it is clean and well lit and safe, than they are to go
to some big giant school far away from their home. I am just
wondering if there is some way that you can join your
activities, because it is going to be harder to walk and
bicycle to schools if we keep moving these schools further and
further away from the students. I mean, those are just some
thoughts, I guess, not really so much a question. Any comments?
Ms. Hubsmith. Yes, Ranking Member Duncan. Thank you very
much for bringing that up and for initiating that small schools
initiative. I agree with you 100 percent that students are
learning better in smaller schools, and there are studies that
are supporting that as well. One of the things that we are
noticing through the Safe Routes to School program and the fact
that it is creating a dialogue between cities and school
districts that traditionally have not communicated with each
other on a regular basis is that it is helping to lead to
discussions about issues such as school siting, because there
has been a change in recent years. In 1970, about 50 percent of
children in the United States lived within two miles of their
school, and now that is only 33 percent of students. So by
creating this Safe Routes to School program and opening up that
dialogue, there are now discussions that are going on about
school siting master plans and how that can interrelate.
For example, in California, one of the things that has
happened because of the Safe Routes to School program and the
fact that we received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation to focus on barriers to children walking and
bicycling to school is that we are able to broaden our approach
to take a look at issues such as school siting, and we have
come under advisement that the California Department of
Education is currently revising their application guidelines
right now for school siting. So we have brought together a
coalition that includes a variety of different organizations,
including the California Department of Public Health, to work
together with the California Department of Education and the
California Department of Transportation to make sure that as
the Department of Education is revising their guidelines, that
they are keeping in mind the fact that transportation to the
school is important and that the size of the school is
important, and that we should be having incentives to renovate
older schools that are within walkable neighborhoods.
Mr. Duncan. Well, let me ask you this. You said today only
one third live within two miles of their school. What was the
front end of that statistics, in 1970?
Ms. Hubsmith. Fifty percent.
Mr. Duncan. Fifty percent.
Well, let me just say one other thing. We have gotten this
annual report and everything in there is good. I have got no
criticism when I say this. But having said that, everything in
there refers to documentation, data collection, evaluation,
surveys, conferences, meetings, training, creation of web
sites, a Safe Routes to School library, a toll-free line, e-
mail, a question and answer database, all that kind of stuff.
Now, what I am getting at is this. I am sure that in the
creation of a new program all that had to be done, but I hope
that if we have a hearing on this a year from now, we won't
hear about all this surveys and studies and data collection and
libraries and conferences, but what we will hear about is
actual projects, actual safe routes being created.
This Committee has been referred to many times over the
years as the Build America Committee, and at some point we want
all these studies and data collection to stop and actual
highways to be built, or actual runways to be built, or actual
water projects to be completed. Do you see what I am getting
at? I hope that if you come back a year or two from now in a
hearing we won't hear about all this paperwork and all this
bureaucracy, we will hear about actual projects, actual safe
routes that have been created. So I hope you will make that
your goal.
Ms. Marchetti. Thank you, sir. That is our report and I can
explain that. You are absolutely right. What we recognize,
though, is that we got started after the States were already
starting their programs, having their State coordinators, and
our biggest concern was that this is the one chance some
communities are going to have to build something that could be
there forever, and we wanted to make sure that they had the
expertise and the knowledge to make their own decisions----
Mr. Duncan. But what I am saying is this: It is good that
you have done all this, but now that we have done it, let's
move to the next level. Let's move to the next step and let's
get some actual safe routes done.
Ms. Marchetti. Absolutely.
Mr. Duncan. That is what I want to hear.
Ms. Marchetti. We feel like we have got the information
place now and it is time to get going.
Mr. Duncan. You can just flood yourself with so much
information and nothing ever gets done. I mean, you know, we
can read about these bills and these issues for years and we
can study them, but nothing ever gets done if you don't do
anything but read, study, and collect data. You have got to act
at some point..
Ms. Marchetti. One last thing I would like to say to
support what you are saying. The other piece of paper we placed
in the folders was a summary showing that early States were
spending funds at 80 percent of available funding. This money
is already out the door, has been awarded.
Mr. Duncan. Well, as long as it is out the door, though, to
create--see, if the States are doing the same thing and they
are doing paperwork and creating web sites and data collection
and all that.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. I thank the gentleman.
Did I see you grasping? All right, Ms. Koch, go ahead.
Ms. Koch. Yes. I just want to speak on behalf of the
States. The States that have funded programs are not laden in
paperwork. We have 24 projects we funded last year. Most of
those are planning, but we are doing some projects that are
hitting the ground, that involve construction and getting kids
out there. The things that are happening with the National
Center for Safe Routes to School are a low amount of funding in
relation to the projects that are being created, and 40 of our
States are already in the process of funding and getting
projects on the ground.
Mr. Duncan. Good. Thank you very much.
Now I have got to, unfortunately, slip out to another
hearing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I understand the gentleman has a very
important hearing to go to. Thank you.
Mr. Oberstar. Mr. Chairman, before the gentleman leaves, I
plead guilty to insisting on the reports, the documentation,
establishment of a database, tracking, and accountability. That
was something I insisted on, that we would be able then to
track the results of this program, leading up to exactly what
the gentleman is talking about, what are the results of Safe
Routes to School? Are you putting in traffic calming? Are you
doing crosswalks? Are you building sidewalks, putting in
traffic lights at schools? And there are numerous examples of
these success stories already reported through this
documentation. The program is, I think, through the
documentation stage and ready, and will now be reporting on the
implementation. I have a number of such projects in my own
district, but I know that Ms. Marchetti's testimony, Ms.
Hubsmith's testimony, and that of Ms. Koch relates several
exemplary sample success stories.
So the gentleman's concern is rightly taken, but I will
plead guilty to the insistence on documentation because I felt
it was, at the outset, to set up a documented database and a
tracking for this program so that we can ave the accountability
that the gentleman is asking for.
Mr. Duncan. Well, I will just say this. I think the
Chairman knows that nobody in the Congress admires and respects
him more than I do, and if you notice that when I first started
that I said I think that all that was necessary and good that
we collect that; I am just saying that now I hope we don't get
bogged down in the paperwork so that we don't accomplish the
good things that the Chairman wanted us to accomplish through
this program.
Mr. Oberstar. Rightly said and rightly taken. Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman for that clarification.
The gentleman from Iowa.
Mr. Braley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
For the members of the panel and members of the audience, I
have the privilege of serving as the Vice Chair of this
Subcommittee, which means I spend most of my time getting
coffee and making copies for Mr. DeFazio.
But I also am very privileged to represent the Field of
Dreams, where the saying ``if you build it, they will come''
became part of our national dialogue. And I think that applies
to the Safe Routes to School program. One of my big
frustrations is that so many of the decisions on Safe Routes to
Schools are impacted by local jurisdictions and how they have
local zoning ordinances and building codes that can influence
whether or not sidewalks are built on passways to schools, and
one of the things I would like to hear about from the panel is
what you have learned from the work that has been funded to
date on this program about the intersection of Federal policies
and local building codes and what additional work needs to be
done to bridge that gap.
But I am also very concerned about how this is playing out.
I happen to represent a district that has urban schools,
suburban schools, and many rural schools. Having grown up in a
town of 1500 and being one of the 42 percent of students who
walked or rode a bicycle to school in 1969, when I was in sixth
grade, I realize that there are vastly different challenges
when you are dealing with Safe Routes to School in urban areas
contrasted with rural areas.
So I would like to open it up to the members of the panel
to comment on those two topics, and I will yield the balance of
my time.
Mr. Bricker. Thank you for your comments and questions. I
can really only give my experience in Oregon, but I think it
might relate to Iowa and other communities.
In my experience, at least from the local level, the major
intersection that tends to not happen is between the schools
and the road authorities. The road authorities tend to be
county and the city governments, and sometimes State
governments, and the schools tend to have their own elected
board with making independent decisions, and the coordination
between the two is tenuous, at best.
As a transportation advocate, for the last 10 years I have
been going to transportation meetings from the State to the
local to the regional. I mentioned that Oregon spends $300
million a year on school bus funding. That is a lot. That is a
lot of transit service, and I never have seen school bus or
school transportation represented. In my experience, the land
use decisions made by schools, while it has to fit within
zoning codes and whatnot of local authorities, they are not
necessarily vetted in the same way that if you were a public
agency, that you are going to make your decisions.
The implications on the transportation system, the burden
on the transportation system that schools might be generating
by locating a school further out because they want a larger
piece of land is not necessarily vetted through the city the
way it would be if you were responsible for both the roads and
the schools. So, in my experience--and I am less experienced
about how the Federal policies work within that, but that
intersection is one of the major things that is missing from
just a political standpoint.
I don't know how it works in Iowa, but in Oregon the school
bus funding goes all through the State. So every school
district is reimbursed between 70 percent and 90 percent of
their school bus funding, whether you spend $1 or $1 million or
$10 million. The incentive to actually reduce the school busing
cost is very low. So even if you build a new school and it
doubles your school busing cost, if you are only paying 30
percent or 20 percent of those costs, there is not much
incentive to bring that school back.
So that is my experience, and I don't know if that helps at
all.
Ms. Koch. Speaking on behalf of a State DOT, I just want to
thank you for your input and let you know that in the State of
Kansas, when we do cite reviews to fund programs, one of the
most important questions we ask is if they have local
subdivision regulations that support this program. If we build
something and then they build new subdivisions and they don't
have any requirements for modernization of their roadway
facilities or sidewalk improvements or improvements at
intersections, then we are going to lose that program once it
gets into that neighborhood. So that is a very important part
of our decision-making process, to ensure that what we start
with our seed money is encouraged through their city-wide and
county funding.
Also, Kansas does have very stringent guidelines for this
program, so I can't speak on behalf of all State DOT programs,
but we take that very seriously.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
And I thank the gentleman for that question.
The gentleman from North Carolina.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I regret
that the gentleman from Iowa admitted he was in the sixth grade
in 1969. That is very demoralizing. What did you say, Mr.
Chairman?
Mr. DeFazio. You weren't even born then, were you, Howard?
Mr. Coble. No comment.
Good to have you all with us.
Ms. Marchetti, in your testimony you included a breakdown
of program activity from various States, but our State was not
included. Can you give us some information as to how the
program has been implemented in North Carolina and the results
thereof?
Ms. Marchetti. Yes, sir, thank you. North Carolina was off
to a great start in the example of the pedestrian and bicycle
coordinator working with the Safe Routes to School coordinator.
That was going quite well. Unfortunately, the person who was in
the position, who had already started doing a lot of training
across the State, had to leave the position and a new person
has started, and that is one of the reasons why North
Carolina's results don't show up as a lot of other States do.
However, the commitment of the pedestrian and bicycle
coordinator, combined with the new Safe Routes to School
coordinator, they have already started doing programs and we
are going to start seeing some things on the ground very
shortly.
Mr. Coble. Thank you.
Ms. Hubsmith, do you have data that supports your statement
that the Safe Routes to School program will decrease energy use
and reduce carbon emissions? I don't doubt that that is
accurate, but do you have data to support that?
Ms. Hubsmith. Thank you very much for asking. The program
has been proven to decrease the number of cars that are
arriving at some schools, and by decreasing the number of cars,
calculations can be made that energy is being saved and carbon
emissions are being reduced. These are the types of things that
we are looking to be able to calculate more fully as the
program is implemented more in the future, and it is one of the
reasons why we put in place the rigorous tracking system. My
information from this is coming from many programs that have
been implemented in California that has had a program for many
years and has shown that we are decreasing the number of cars
that are coming to schools and then, by proxy, energy and
carbon emissions are being decreased as well.
Mr. Coble. I thank you for that.
Mr. Bricker or Ms. Koch, either one, I am told that
parents, in many instances, have expressed concern that their
children may be at risk, as far as safety is concerned, while
biking or walking to school. How can the Safe Routes to School
program address those concerns?
Ms. Koch. This is certainly what we are seeing in a lot of
our data that we collect from parents, that they have concerns
about traffic safety. But a lot of those concerns that they
have are about personal safety, about kidnapping or bullying,
or other things that they can't prevent if they are not there.
Something that we really promote with the Safe Routes to School
program are group walking or biking, Walking School Bus
programs, bicycle trains, where children are accompanied to
school with adults that the parents know, adults that have gone
through background checks, so that they know that they are
legitimate volunteers of the school district or the city, that
they have obligation to get those kids to school safely and
consistently. That is one way that we do it.
We understand this is a concern. We honor that concern
those parents have and we work with our local communities to
ensure that they have the set of skills they need to create
programs that meet those concerns and that the kids can still
get there walking and biking.
Mr. Coble. Do you want to add anything to that, Mr.
Bricker?
Mr. Bricker. She did a great job.
Mr. Coble. Good.
Mr. Marchetti, you indicate that between 5 percent and 51
percent of students live within walking distance to their
schools. Let me put a two-part question to you. How do you
define walking distance, and why is the range so wide that it
is 5 percent to 51 percent?
Ms. Marchetti. Thank you, sir. The walking distance is
considered one mile, especially for younger children.
Mr. Coble. One mile?
Ms. Marchetti. One mile is walking distance to school.
Bicycling distance is considered more, two to three miles. The
range is because we still have some community schools, we still
have some consolidated schools. The point there is that there
are some schools where as many as 50 percent of the children,
with proper environment and encouragement, could be walking and
we could be reducing the congestion around the school.
I would like to make a quick comment about when we were
talking about school siting. We used to have schools that had
an average of 150 students per school. We have gone to such
extremes that one State had a campus so large that they were
busing students from one building to the other. That State has
since rescinded their acreage rules for schools.
What we would like to see is go away from the 5 percent
schools and go more to the larger percent that could be walking
and biking.
Mr. Coble. Mr. Chairman, if I could ask one more question.
I know my red light is on.
To any of the panelists, what percentage of school children
walked to school or biked to school prior to the implementation
of the Safe Routes to School program, and what is the
percentage today, if you know that?
Ms. Marchetti. I will take that question. It is a very good
question. Unfortunately, it is a question everyone would like
to have answered, and we are just now in the process of trying
to figure it out. The tally forms that we have produced would
enable schools to ask students two days during a one-week
period a year how did you get to school, and this way we would
be the first to start getting that kind of information. If we
can get comparison sites, then we would be able to understand
what schools who haven't had this opportunity are experiencing
versus what the schools that do have the opportunity.
So we are in the process of understanding that, but that is
a universal question that people have been asking and wanting
to find solutions to.
Mr. Coble. If you could get that to us, we would appreciate
that. Thank you.
Ms. Marchetti. Yes.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman. I would just ask the
gentleman she said the biking distance was three to five miles.
I was wondering on the penny-farthing bikes in the gentleman's
day, how far could you ride one of those big things?
Mr. Coble. The gentleman from Oregon is giving me a hard
time, but he is doing it with a smile on his face.
[Laughter.]
Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Baird, do you have any questions?
Mr. Baird. Just very briefly. I just came back from a
weekend in London and noticed a tremendous amount of people
bicycle commuting. Forgive me for coming in late, but have you
talked about how our kids get to school relative to young
people in other nations? Where do we stand? If you have already
covered it, forgive me for asking. I am familiar with Holland
and other places. Everybody is riding bikes. In London, we just
saw lots of bikes on the streets, and this was on the city
streets.
Ms. Marchetti. I would like to make a quick comment on
that. I was just at a conference yesterday in Toronto on Active
and Safe Routes to School. It was an international conference
and, oddly enough, people from the U.K. and Canada were asking
how we were getting our good program started. They do have
great experiences, but they are also starting to see some
problems coming up. One of the issues that we discussed
yesterday was that as they make it easier for parents to drop
off their kids in cars, they are seeing a decrease in walking
and biking. They are very concerned about that and looking for
solutions.
So we are all sort of on a continuum. They had early
successes. Then, they did something that is reducing their
successes, and we are hopefully learning from each other that
way.
Mr. Baird. We had a hearing on a Committee I Chair,
Research and Science Subcommittee, on how social sciences
inform energy consumption policies, and very subtle differences
in the wording of persuasive messages can make 30 percent, 40
percent differences in such mundane things as recycling towels
in hotels. Are you incorporating any social science research in
your strategy to encourage use of bikes or walking to school?
[No response.]
Mr. Baird. That is not a good sign.
Ms. Koch. I guess I can speak to that. A lot of what we do
is trying to change social behaviors, and if we can make
walking or biking social activities, activities that have
positive connotations, rather than negative connotations, we
find research that shows that when people see adult pedestrians
or adult bicyclists, they have negative connotations about
those people: that they are poor, that they don't have access
to vehicles, that they are part of our society that we are
throwing away. If we can change that through positive messages
at a young age, then we can incorporate that as they get older
and make it a more positive message so that people will want to
walk or bike, they will choose that.
The most important thing we do with Safe Routes to School
is enable people to make a choice. We don't want to force
anyone to do anything, but we want to give them that
opportunity so that they can make lifetime behavioral changes.
Mr. Bricker. If I may follow up, Mr. Baird. In Portland we
started working on a program called Smart Trips--it is actually
a European program that had a slightly different name--and for
the last four years in Portland bicycling has been increasing
exponentially. We have a pretty well built-out bicycle network,
and in the last four years we have been promoting the bicycle
network, as opposed to substantially increasing the bicycle
network, and what we have found is that by just giving messages
to households that there is a significant reduction in
automobile trips; just by asking people are you interested, and
then when they say, yes, I am interested, giving them more
information and support. And I truthfully forget the data, but
it is something like a decrease of 9 percent in automobile
trips and, as I mentioned bicycling is increasing
exponentially. In Portland right now, a lot of the effort is
marketing.
We are also, at the same time, learning new strategies. We
have learned that people prefer to bicycle in larger numbers
together. We have learned that people prefer to bicycle in low
traffic streets, as opposed to the really busy streets, so we
are talking on new strategies to even try to increase. So I
think part of this is that, really, we are in sort of a young
profession, really, in 1991, in ISTEA, where we really started
working on bicycling. So some of this stuff is young, but I
think that we are getting some data collection.
Ms. Hubsmith. And if I just may add, I think we all needed
to think for a moment because it was such a good question. One
of the hallmarks of this program is that it gives flexibility
to the DOTs to fund infrastructure improvements between 70
percent and 90 percent, and non-infrastructure improvements
between 10 percent and 30 percent. So the DOTs are working
together, and many of them, even though it is not a Federal
requirement, have formed advisory committees. In fact, 36 of
the States have formed advisory committees that bring together
the Department of Public Health with Education with law
enforcement in order to work on issues such as that. Many
times, Departments of Public Health have done a lot of research
around messaging, which is why it is really important to bring
them in.
At the local level, as well, the program is based on the
five Es, and every community determines how to implement those
Es, which are Evaluation, Education, Encouragement,
Enforcement, and Engineering. And while a program is different
whether it is in a rural area, suburban area, or an urban area,
the common practice is bringing the community together to
address how to realize those five Es, and with Evaluation being
the first one, it is really important to survey the parents as
to what it would make them do to change their behavior. So
messaging is often incorporated on the State level, on the
local level based on the concerns of the community, and then
also based on the grade level that you are working with.
We found that this program serves K through 8. The K
through 5 children, elementary school, are reacting in many
ways to their parents, so messaging is detailed a lot more
toward the parents. When you get toward middle school, many
times you will work through student leadership groups to have
the students develop the messages and then to bring those
messages to their students, because they are very influenced
from their peers. So there is a lot of work that is being done
with that to tailor the messaging.
Thank you.
Mr. Baird. I appreciate that very much. That is good news.
I would just encourage, also, to look at the literature in this
field. One of the studies that we had--and my staff will get
you this, but a gentleman was looking at--I mentioned about
towel usage in hotels. Well, they were able to increase towel
recycling by 34 percent by just changing the message, and here
is the take-home point that is troubling: none of the messages
that they found most effective were actually being used by any
of the hotels. The hotels were saying if you recycle your
towels, you will save energy, you will save the planet, the
world would be a better place, we sing Kumbaya, basically.
What they found was that the most effective message was
everybody else is doing it, you don't want to be the guy who
isn't. I mean, that is paraphrased, but the point being wrong
messaging can actually be counterproductive, even if you think
it is right. And if we have got some good literature on this,
good data, empirical studies would actually put different
messages.
They actually found, similarly, at Petrified National
Forest, the signs that were intended to cause people to not
take petrified rocks from the forest actually increased theft;
whereas, a different version actually decreased it. So you want
to be careful and hopefully disseminate that. Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman for that observation.
Mr. Dent.
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am fascinated by this
whole conversation here, about how to encourage students to
walk or bike to school, do it safely. I mean, my own household
is a classic example of this. My children take the bus to
school, even though I try to tell them it is only a couple
hundred yards further to the school to walk. You are going in
the right direction and I lose all these articles at home, so I
realize what you are up against trying to persuade people. But
it has been a continuing frustration for me, just in my own
household, to talk about the benefits of walking to school
when, in fact, it seems to be socially fun to ride the bus, as
opposed to walk. These are just the issues that I face in my
household. Yours are much greater.
I just wanted to ask you a question, Ms. Hubsmith, if I
could. You may have touched on this already, and if you have, I
apologize. Do you have any kind of quantitative data that can
support your statement that Safe Routes to School programs will
decrease energy use and reduce carbon emissions? Do you have
any data on that up to this point?
Ms. Hubsmith. At this point, right now, what we are doing
is we are gathering data, and my statement about that was based
on some of the early implementation of programs prior to
SAFETEA-LU. In California we have seen that the program has
increased walking and biking in the range of 20 percent to 200
percent and has improved safety up to 49 percent. By increasing
the walking and biking, we have decreased the number of
automobile trips, and calculations can be made about the miles
that students are from school and, as a result, how much energy
and how much carbon is being decreased.
Through the tracking system that the National Center for
Safe Routes to School is putting in place, we will be able to
learn much more about how this pans out with the implementation
of the SAFETEA-LU program, and we look forward to providing
more of that hard data to you in the future, which is one of
the reasons why we have worked so hard on evaluation and data.
I would add that one of the things I mentioned in my
earlier testimony is that we would really like to work together
with Congress to have even more rigorous systems for data
collection, and we feel that we can be collecting data as part
of the census, as part of the National Household Travel Survey,
and also finding ways, when FHWA collects data from States, to
add in more information about collecting data related to
schools. We know that Congress is moving more toward a
performance-based analysis for transportation systems, and we
are all in favor of that. We would really like to have your
help in terms of being able to further quantify these things
because we know they are working.
Mr. Dent. Also with respect to quantifiable data, I think
you stated that up to 30 percent of the morning rush hour
traffic is generated by parents who are driving their children
to schools. You said that earlier, did you not?
Ms. Hubsmith. I did. Thank you. These are data that come
from local communities, it is not data that is collected at the
State level. In Marin County, California, where I am from, they
determined that between 21 percent and 27 percent in the
morning traffic is parents driving their children to school.
That is from the Transportation Authority of Marin. Similarly,
in Santa Rosa, their traffic engineer says it is the same
number. And we are seeing similar types of studies in other
communities.
These are done on a community-by-community type basis
because the data is not supported at the State level yet.
Mr. Dent. I don't doubt the data, it seems logical to me,
just my observations dealing with taking kids to school and
watching the morning traffic patterns in my community. I
wouldn't be surprised by that number. But I guess the follow-up
to that would be if these parents are dropping their children
off on the way to way to work or to run some other errand, do
you think this program is going to have a real impact on
reducing congestion?
Ms. Hubsmith. I do think that it will. In fact, in Marin
County, California, what we were able to see is that,
consecutively, every year we have seen a 13-point percent
decrease in traffic congestion around the schools because we
are reversing the way that children are coming to school. By
making it safer for students to walk and bicycle, and
especially by incorporating improvements like the Walking
School Bus, where one parent will walk with the group of
children together, coupled with engineering improvements and
adding in law enforcement, police officers that are out there
on the street and enforcing the speed limit, we are able to
show a decrease in traffic congestion around schools, which
also then improves air quality, and it creates sort of a cyclic
effect because as more people begin walking and bicycling,
others begin to want to do it as well, and it is really
something that helps create a positive momentum within the
community when we get law enforcement and other infrastructure
improvements involved.
Mr. Dent. Well, thank you. This panel has done a great job
of informing me so I can go back home at the end of this week
and instruct my children and wife that it is better to walk to
school, for a lot of reasons that you have identified. Now I
have empirical data to back it up, so thank you for that.
I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. The gentleman might consult with the resident
psychologist on the most persuasive techniques for that
messaging.
Mr. Dent. I have already done so.
Mr. DeFazio. Oh, okay. All right.
I turn now to the Full Committee Chairman, Mr. Oberstar,
for his questions.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Dent, thank you for those questions and comments, and
for your own personal experience. I will give you an example
from Sacramento, where my son lives. Son Ted, when he was in
high school, was a trainer for the football team and he wanted
to drive the family car to practice. I put a backpack on my
back, got on my bike, and pedaled with him to school to show
him it could be done. He is now a father of two. He gets on his
bike with my granddaughter, Kathryn Jo, and they pedal from
their home about a block and pick up Kathryn's friend, Sierra,
and then they pedal another block and they pick up their friend
Jackson, for Jackson Hole--this is California; they are named
for mountain ranges and things--and then they pick up another
couple of children and then they cross this 100-foot street to
the school, and Ted then pedals on to CalTrans, California
Transportation Department, where he works.
What do you suppose Kathryn is going to be doing 20 years
from now? She is going to be biking with her children to
school. And in the process, crossing that 100-foot street, Ted
observed that the apartments and condos and single-family homes
on the one side, children were being bused less than a quarter
of a mile, just the example that you gave, to this school. He
said, that is crazy, why are they doing this? So he met with
the city planning department to get a traffic calming and
traffic lights and they said, oh, we can't do it, we don't have
the money. So Ted figured out how to do it. And he also went
out and got a city councilman elected, school board member
elected, and a mayor elected to enforce all these things, and
they changed it. They now have traffic calming, they have
traffic lights, the kids from the apartments and so on are now
biking and walking to school. It takes a lot, but you can
change the habits.
Mr. Bricker. Will the Chairman yield?
Mr. Oberstar. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. Bricker. One thing I have noticed about this issue,
from a personal perspective, is my wife is concerned about
security. There seems to be more security in going to the bus
stop than walking to the school, even though I can see my child
just walk to the door, practically. But there is some fear that
something could happen on the streets. When I went to school, I
always walked to school out of sight of my parents and much
greater distances, but because of our society and the criminal
element out there, there is such a fear among many parents.
There seems to be security in numbers in the buses.
I am not sure how you overcome that, but I am trying to
talk to that psychologist for my wife to see if she can
overcome some of those fears. It is just an issue that I just
wanted to share with you.
Mr. Oberstar. Absolutely, and that is why we started out
with--maybe we have to change the term to Securer Routes to
School, because that really is what it is all about. When I was
a elementary and junior and senior high school student walking
to school, the worst we had to fear was an errant snowball
being thrown in our direction. But not so anymore.
The question has been asked what are the success stories,
and Mr. Duncan raised the question about studies and reports.
The education and the engineering part of the five E's are
foundational activities. You have to develop the database. You
have to do the engineering. You have to do the education. As we
learn from the Marin County experience and the Arlington,
Massachusetts experience, you have to develop a base of
information, design engineering and find the trouble spots, the
traffic obstacles, the security questions, and address those
with the infrastructure changes that are needed, with the
training of students to safe practices in both walking and
cycling, and then implement the infrastructure changes that are
needed: sidewalks, traffic lights at key crossing areas,
lowering traffic lights to eye level for walkers and cyclers.
All those are in the works. This is foundational.
But in Deb Hubsmith's testimony there are at least four
pages of success stories. In Idaho, until recently, children
had no choice but to walk in the street because there were no
sidewalks. There are now sidewalks being built. That makes a
huge difference.
In Michigan, 223 schools training 547 people in 100 school
districts. More than half of the counties of Michigan are
engaged in this foundational work of training, changing mind-
sets, changing attitudes. That is hard to do, to change
people's attitudes, especially about walking and biking to
school, but those things are being done.
In Missouri, 160 children, six schools register for the
Walking School Bus program and walk to school every day on 14
different routes.
In Two Harbors, on the north shore of Lake Superior, in my
congressional district, the city has had a school right on the
shore of Lake Superior, spectacular view, but it is an 80 year
old school building. They built a new one inland, on the other
side of a major highway. Most of the people live on the east
side of that highway. But the students said build us a trail, a
round trip, so that we can bike and walk to school and come
home by a different route, and with the help of some funding
and in TEA-21 and SAFETEA-LU, that two mile bike trail and
walking trail has been built, and it is in constant use. And
when the kids are in school, the parents are out using the
trail. I see them every time I get up to Two Harbors.
In the southern end of my district, in Cambridge and
Isanti, two small towns--well, Cambridge is not so small by our
standards, it is 6,000 people now; Isanti is about 1,500,
2,000. But the children from Isanti go to school in Cambridge,
four miles away. What separates them is a wildlife waterfall
wetland, otherwise known as a swamp.
Well, they said why can't we bike and walk to school? And
if we could go through the wetland, it would also be
interesting. And now they are doing that with an elevated wood
four mile facility. Well, it is about two miles of elevated
wood pathway, with appropriate railings, and then paved asphalt
on the other ends. They love it. They are excited to get to
school, to talk about muskrats and herons and geese and ducks
that the have seen on the way. This is exciting and it is
changing habits, and they are healthier and they are ready to
learn when they get to school.
In Marin County, Ms. Hubsmith, you didn't state at all the
success story. Tell us when you started Safe Routes to School
and the percentage now that are participating.
Ms. Hubsmith. Thank you, Chairman Oberstar. When we started
the pilot program back in the year 2000, about 21 percent of
children were walking and bicycling to school, and in my
testimony I indicated that at the end of that first year there
was a 64 percent increase in the number of students walking, a
114 percent increase in the number of students bicycling, a 91
percent increase in car-pooling, and a 39 percent decrease in
the number of students arriving by private car carrying only
one student.
And I will add that after the one year of funding from the
Federal Government, the county did not want the program to end,
so what happened after that was that the Marin Community
Foundation chipped in some funding in order to make it possible
to continue. Then the Bay Area Air Quality Management District
provided a few years of funding. Then the funding was going to
end because all of these funding streams were only allowed for
one or two years. The county was looking for a way to deal with
our aging infrastructure and was going to be launching a
transportation sales tax in order to deal largely with roads
and transit, and one of the things that they polled upon was
how would people like to support a measure that included Safe
Routes to School and enable that program to continue so it
could be safe. It was one of the highest things that came up in
the community poll. So they ended up dedicating 11 percent of
the transportation sales taxing to the program.
So our Marin County program is now in 45 of our schools,
which is two thirds of our schools, and we are seeing a regular
amount of decrease in the number of cars that are arriving at
schools as a result of the program. It has been very successful
and we are very grateful to have had the opportunity to work
with the Federal Government to do that pilot.
There has been a 13 percent decrease. And if you go to the
web site tam.ca.gov, and then click under Programs for Safe
Routes to School, there is about a 50 page evaluation report
that substantiates how that has happened.
Mr. Oberstar. Those are just striking numbers and exciting
numbers, and the goal is to replicate them all around the
Country, and as the foundational work takes hold, the education
work and all, that is going to happen.
Mr. Bricker, I was struck by your observation that Oregon
spends $300 million a year on bus transportation, over 50
percent of children are driven to school. I never thought about
that. If we can reduce the amount of money that States and
school districts are spending on school bus transportation. We,
in fact, did get a good deal of push-back from the bus drivers
organization and from private school bus companies that
contract with school districts to provide schools: oh, you are
going to take our business away from us. Well, I hope so. I
hope so. But I have never seen it quantified before, and you
have provided a great service to us. Have you heard any such
push-back from the private or public school bus operators?
Mr. Bricker. Well, Chairman Oberstar, I appreciate the
opportunity to talk about this. This is one of those issues, as
a bicycle advocate and lobbyist, and a pedestrian advocate and
someone who is in the Capitol, this is something that is very,
very challenging, as you can imagine. There is a lot of money
in school busing, $300 million, and there is a desire to make
sure that every kid can get to school safely. So I want to
acknowledge that every student should be able to get to school,
and I believe that when the law in Oregon that basically
required school busing was created, it was out of creation for
every child to be able to get to school.
However, the school bus fund is not eligible to fund--well,
it is not clearly eligible to fund transportation projects that
would reduce the cost, and I do believe we have not had success
working with the school bus lobby on trying to shift some of
those dollars. So if only 1 percent of those funds went, we
would triple the amount of money we are getting for Safe Routes
to School, and if 10 percent, if we had $30 million a year to
increase safety for schools around Oregon, we could
significantly reduce the ongoing costs for school bus
transportation.
And the other thing to note on school bus transportation is
the school buses are only half full. The way that they are
created, they do these routes and half of the time kids are
driven to school and half of the time they get on the bus. So,
really, from a performance standpoint, it is not very clear how
effective those funds are being used. So while school bus is a
very safe way to get to school, an important way for kids who
live miles and miles away from school, within the areas of one,
two, or three miles, many kids are getting driven to school and
many kids are getting bused because of the safety improvements.
If we were able to flex some of those dollars, we would be able
to reduce long-term costs, and I think that that would have
appeal to most decision-makers.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much.
I will yield to the gentleman from Oregon.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Unfortunately, the No Child Left Behind Act may have a
provision which will actually increase the use of busing,
rather than decrease it, in that it mandates that if you are in
a school that is deemed to be failing under AYP, the school
actually has to set aside a trust fund, basically, that would
be used to bus the kids to another school of their choice. I
actually had the unfortunate experience of being at a school
where the principal was in the process of laying off 24
paraprofessional educators because their salary, instead of
being used to help educate the kids to help them succeed, had
to be set aside for a fund to pay for the cost of busing to
send kids to another school. And, by the way, that other school
didn't have to have demonstrated any better success with that
same population. So No Child Left Behind may actually,
paradoxically, increase busing to other schools and, thereby,
all the other side effects we have talked about today.
Mr. Oberstar. Maybe we can change this to No Bicyclist Left
Behind. I thank you for that observation. One final comment,
Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Koch, I really appreciate your comments and
observations about the experience in Kansas, physical changes
around the school zone, soft-side elements, encouragement
programs. Flexible nature of the program, that is what we
intended it to be. We gave flexibility and you have shown how,
in Kansas, that flexibility is serving the needs of
constituents and tailoring the program to the varying needs of
differing size communities.
And I appreciate your observation about application to
tribal governments, and I will follow up further on that
matter.
But your final paragraph, local communities, small town in
Southeastern Kansas, why do they want this Safe Routes to
School program? Because their city of 1500 people is on the
verge of dying, and that a Safe Routes to School program would
encourage families to move to the town to raise their children,
and you create a--you call it a livability, I call it quality
of life issue. If we can achieve that around this Nation, we
will have accomplished something extraordinary.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman for his leadership and
for that inspiring statement.
Mrs. Capito.
Mrs. Capito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very interesting
topic, Safe Routes to School.
I represent West Virginia, and the trend in the educational
system over the last, I would say, 20 years has been to
consolidate schools to where, instead of an elementary school
where you might have 150, 200 students, you might have as many
as 800, 900 students. While that is a little rare in a State
like West Virginia, I know in some of the larger, more urban
areas it is very likely to be happening. So I think that
presents challenges for anybody seeking to walk or have a bike
route to the school. Do you find this to be a particular
challenge? I will just throw the question open to anybody who
might like to answer it.
Ms. Hubsmith. Yes, thank you. This is a big challenge, and
through surveys that have been done by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, distance is the number one reason that
there is an obstacle for walking or bicycling to school, and
certainly the consolidation of schools and putting them further
out on the edges of communities is something that is
contributing toward the problem.
There was an interesting analogy that was made from a
colleague at the EPA that has talked about school siting,
because if you look at the Safe Routes to School program, there
are $612 million that is being spent nationally on the program
over five years. If you look at the cost of school construction
and siting schools, it is much, much greater than that. And he
asked the question can the tail wag the dog, and, in effect,
what we are doing is we are seeing that that is happening in
some ways, that just the discussions that are being created at
the State level, among the Department of Education and the
Department of Transportation and the Department of Health
around Safe Routes to School and the impacts of school siting
and school consolidation, because we have this Federal funding
and we are charging State DOTs with creating a program, that is
influencing regulations that are being related to school
siting. And because the program focuses on the five E's at the
local level, discussions need to be had with the school
districts and the cities, who often don't speak with each
other. I mean, many times you will have a school district that
decides to site its school in a certain location, and they
don't consult with the city's master plan and their general
plan before making that happen.
This program, this small program is really creating those
conversations, and hopefully one of the goals we can have
emerge out of this as a positive consequence is that there can
be more effort that is brought forward about the decisions of
school siting, what that means in terms of walkability, what
that means in terms of the neighborhood, what that means in
terms of students' ability to be able to learn. So we are
hoping that the tail can wag the dog and change the habits of a
generation.
Ms. Marchetti. I would like to just briefly add to her
comments. Observing at the national level what is going on in
all the States, as a lot of communities were rushing toward
building the larger schools, some communities are rushing back,
because they are recognizing, what we thought was a good idea
for these reasons have other unintended consequences that we
don't like. So some of what I am hearing is, you know, when we
compare refurbishing this school with building this new school,
nobody ever factors in transportation costs. That changes
things.
Other places are saying, you know, if we take this downtown
school and refurbish it and include a library, a YMCA, a
childcare center, whatever, we have created a community cluster
that benefits everyone.
So there is a lot of innovation out there right now; we
have just got to get the word out. People are recognizing that
accomplishing one good sometimes does some other things that
you really never thought about.
Mrs. Capito. I think that is an excellent point, and I do
see that trend in my community of rather than trying to go to
four schools together, maybe refining the schools that are
existing.
I was thinking about my own experience growing up. I mean,
it just struck me. I used to walk to school, but I also walked
home for lunch and walked back to school. And when I tell my
own children that, they can't believe that you can--I remember
my mother made pancakes sometimes for lunch; they were so good.
In any event, I think another challenge for students,
particularly in the elementary school area, is the latchkey kid
phenomenon, where, if a child is coming home after school, if
they are walking home or biking home, more on their own
without--I mean, our buses would not drop our kindergarten
students unless I was standing there or an adult was standing
there. That has got to be a challenge in terms of trying to
develop programs around all the different times that people are
home and putting that responsibility on the child to remember,
well, I can't really walk today because mom and dad aren't
going to be home.
I am sure you deal with this, trying to develop this
program. Do you have any insight into that?
Ms. Marchetti. The only insight I have is that, when I get
bogged down in these thoughts sometimes and think, oh, there
are so many issues and so many concerns, I look to the
community level, they figure things out in ways I never would
have thought of. They are creating groups of kids that walk
together. They are creating community service projects where
high school students walk with the kids and actually do some
mentoring of them on other issues as well. We need to gather
these examples and get them out there, because it is at the
very local level that the most amazing ideas are coming.
Mrs. Capito. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and
Chairman Oberstar for all your work on this project; it
certainly is something that is good for the American people and
for children. Children need protection at all levels.
I did not have the experience Chairman Oberstar had. I went
to school in Memphis and in Florida and in California, and I
walked, but we didn't have snowball problems.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Cohen. We did have problems sometimes with the Federal
Express jets flying over and bothering our hearing, but other
than that it was all right.
But walking to school was a good experience, and you need
kids to learn.
My State Senator is here, State Senator Beverly Marrero,
and I would just like to ask the panel. Much of this is
administrative, but are there legislative initiatives that any
of you all are familiar with that she could take back to
Tennessee in promoting safety, either pedestrian or bicycle,
for kids and safe routes? Yes, sir.
Mr. Bricker. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. In Oregon we have passed
a couple of different efforts trying to basically create the
discussion. We, in the creation of our Safe Routes action
plans, we require that schools work with the city or the
county. So just the actual having people who are city and
county engineers, who understand the roadway systems, working
with the people who understand children and the kind of ebb and
flow of the school, is something that needs to happen, and in
that process you get parents and the community on board. So we
actually have legislative that our Safe Routes to School action
plans would require that partnership to take place.
We also, in this last legislation session, required that
any new schools to be constructed or major renovation of the
school would have to launch a Safe Routes action plan that has
these stipulations in it as well. So when you are looking at
some of these issues--and I think that potentially looking
forward, when you consolidate a school you should be required
to look at the transportation implications. And when I say
transportation, I mean safety as well, and looking at actually
walking around with the folks in some community.
Ms. Hubsmith. Congressman, I have three ideas for you
related to State legislation that might be possible. One is
with the issue related to school siting. I don't know off the
top of my head what the regulations are in Tennessee, but
several States have minimum acreage requirements and indicate
that if you are going to locate a high school, it needs to be
on a tract of land that has 30 acres. We recommend that there
be a removal of those minimum acreage standards, because that
often drives the schools to be on the edges of communities.
In addition, many States have regulations called the two
thirds rule. If it costs more than two thirds to build a new
school than it would be to retrofit an old school, they
encourage building of the new school instead. It would be a
good idea to take those regulations off the books to evaluate
each school site and plan on its merits, so you can work to
create the neighborhood schools.
A second idea is the fact that relates to that there are
many more applications for Safe Routes to School funding as
there is funding available, and the Federal funding is often
quite flexible. Through SAFETEA-LU, Congress created a
provision for the creation of a strategic highway safety plan
in every State, and each State is analyzing data-driven
analyses for how injuries and fatalities take place. On a
national level, 13.5 percent of injuries and fatalities are
bicyclists and pedestrians. Something that your State could do
is take a look at the percentage of bicycle and pedestrian
injuries in your State and create a fair share for safety and
guarantee that that percentage of your safety funds goes
towards bicycle and pedestrian improvements, including Safe
Routes to School.
Finally, another provision is called Complete Streets. Many
States and municipalities are moving forward to create this
right now, and what this is is a requirement that every
roadway, as it is being constructed, or any transit project
that is being constructed would consider the needs of
bicyclists and pedestrians simultaneously. And this is really a
good use of taxpayer dollars, because as you are planning for
transportation infrastructure, we want to plan for people who
are walking, bicycling, who are disabled, who are elderly, who
are taking transit and who are using automobiles, and by
actually putting legislation in effect that requires this
consideration helps to lead toward the construction of more
comprehensive projects that serve the needs of all users and
don't have to be retrofitted at a later date.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you. I want to thank both of you and ask
LA, who is here, Mr. Houston, to get with you all and get some
notes about your legislation. You know, this is such a good
program, a lot with obesity. We have got a problem with obesity
with kids, and that is because they are taking a bus or
driving, rather than walking or bicycling. That is part of it.
You know, you get into the lobbies. You mentioned the bus
folks. They don't want to give up their money. You know, all
kind of things get involved, and we really need to look after
the kids first.
I thank you all for your testimony, and we will try to
implement some of these things in Tennessee.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Chairman Oberstar.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, I will thank the gentleman.
I want to thank the panel. I think that what we have shown,
we have laid a very solid foundation for an extraordinarily
successful program over the final years of the SAFETEA-LU bill,
and I think it is something upon which we will be able to build
in future authorizations and hopefully expand. So thank you for
your time and your testimony.
The Committee is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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