Fomer Life

In my previous life, I used to do some work with NHTSA. One of the things in which I was involved was the Bikeability Checklist. I also created some content for the Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Center at the Highway Safety Research Center at UNC-Chapel Hill.

There's some walking (pedestrian) stuff in there as well. Joel's posts about Safe Routes to School stuff made me think of that. There are some great tools to help get your communities to embrace walking and bicycling.

Of course, most people are just to busy to bother, but it's worth a shot and at least you won't fail for lack of good resources, right?

Safe Routes to School programs have a lot of claimed founders. Here's the FHWA federally-funded site. In my experience with Safe Routes, this is the US originator. Marin County Bicycle Coaltion, Deb Hubsmith and Patrick Seidler deserve A TON of credit for this. Patrick Seidler is president of WTB, by the way. This is the BikesBelong/DC-based Safe Routes bunch, including Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Active Living By Design.

If you ever wanted to know about how to safely get around, get active or deal with the local community, there's pretty-much every bit of information available on those sites.

Enjoy!