Safe Routes to School in Salon

Salon has an excellent article this week detailing the emerging Safe Routes to School movement in the U.S. and the emergence of walking and bicycling as important parts of U.S. transportation policy:

"It has the potential to become one of the best ways to improve conditions for walking and biking," said Clark, describing the broad cross-section of Safe Routes supporters, including parents and teachers, health agencies and urban planners. "There's an unassailable coalition." . . .

But if Safe Routes to School is a case study in successful grass-roots organizing, the story behind it also unfolds as a classic -- and damning -- parable of contemporary American culture. Once a national pastime taken for granted by millions of children, walking to school is, under Safe Routes, a multimillion-dollar effort orchestrated by adults and branded with its own catchy acronym: SR2S. The collapse of walking as a natural activity and its rebirth as a public-private partnership suggests the intermodal equivalent of a society gone mad -- an Alice in Wonderland state of affairs spotlighted by the corporate sponsorship and liability-insurance measures described in SR2S toolkits.

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