Participating groups gather for training session

MOSES LAKE — Providing kids with the encouragement and tools needed to have a safe route to their school takes a group effort, and representatives from a number of local agencies met earlier this week to talk about the strategies to ensure those safe routes.

The training was part of Safe Routes to School, a program which promotes goals like safety, health and traffic relief in an effort to get more children biking and walking to school.

David Levinger is the executive director of Feet First in Seattle, one of the agencies helping to administer the Safe Routes to School program. Levinger and Bicycle Alliance of Washington development director Dave Janis spoke to the group at the Larson Recreation Center Tuesday as part of engagements in a number of communities about education programs and opportunities for funding to create those safe routes.

Levinger told attendees creating a Safe Routes to School program involves a number of steps, including identifying existing issues, finding solutions and evaluating progress on any problems.

"I think the key to this whole picture is (that) parents and children feel safe," Levinger said, communicating to participants in Tuesday's workshop that all children should be able to walk within about a mile of their schools.

Janis said factors like speed and increased traffic volumes are often addressed in providing a safe route, but challenges like ensuring an adequate number of crossing guards near schools, and providing numerous different locations for parents to drop off their children in order to avoid bottlenecks may also arise.

One way to provide those routes is through trails, and integrating schools into activity trails. Tuesday's workshop was put on in part by the Moses Lake Trails Planning Team, which is encouraging walkability in the community through its master plan for a series of interconnected trails in the Moses lake area.

Lori Barlow is an associate planner at the city of Moses Lake, and is also one of the members of the Trails Planning Team. Barlow said the aim of the program is really to create an awareness, and to reinforce the ideas of engineering, encouragement, enforcement and education brought forth in the program.

To develop routes like crosswalks, sidewalks and paths, and provide for a safe way for kids to travel to and from school, Barlow said there is a need to strengthen the partnerships between the various responsible agencies.

"No one entity is going to supply all of those needs," she said, noting the city, county and other municipalities can build upon their partnerships to create those routes.

Developing those partnerships is one step needed in order to provide those safe routes, said Sally Goodwin with Health Communities in Moses Lake.

"We have to have this cooperation between city, county, schools and everything else," she said.

Healthy communities wants to encourage children to walk and bike to school as a method of combating childhood obesity and promoting a healthy lifestyle. In order for the kids to take part in that walking, Goodwin said the community needs to provide the safe trails and crosswalks for kids to travel on. The changes to those routes are not going to happen overnight, but Goodwin said the progress is something the numerous organizations will continue to work on.

Projects like safe crossings near schools across Broadway Avenue and Stratford Road are among the proposals Goodwin said will need to be looked at in the long term.

Moses Lake School District administrator P.J. De Benedetti said the school district has worked with the city and county on projects like crosswalks in the past to ensure pedestrian safety for its students. Those projects, and others in the future, De Benedetti said, are ones in which the costs can be shared between the different municipalities and the school district.

While some capital projects do take funding, De Benedetti said some safe routes proposals can be initiated without any financing at all. Encouraging parents to walk with their children, and promoting those pedestrian practices are programs that do not require financing.

De Benedetti said one of the best ways to ensure a safe route for the students is to encourage safe driving on streets in school areas. He said motorists should watch for children during the times when those kids are traveling to and from school, and be cognizant of their presence on the roadways.

"That's something every one of us can do without intervention from anybody," De Benedetti said.