Safe Routes to School: What Happened to Walking and Biking to School?
According to U.S. School Travel 2009 research, not that long ago, walking or biking to school was an ordinary part of childhood. Kids walked together, rode their bikes, met friends along the way, and gradually learned how to navigate their neighborhoods on their own.
Today, that experience is becoming much less common. For many parents, the school drop-off starts with a car. Not necessarily because they want to drive, but because letting a child walk or bike alone can feel too risky.
This raises an interesting question: Did children become less capable of getting around on their own—or did we build streets that became less capable of accommodating them?
The Problem Is Bigger Than Traffic Safety
Traffic safety is an obvious concern. But the problem with car-oriented school streets goes beyond the possibility of a crash. When parents don't feel comfortable letting their children walk or bike to school, the natural response is to drive them. Then thousands of other parents make the same decision. Parents complain about the congestion around schools, yet they are the cause of the problem.
More cars arrive at the school entrance. Streets become more congested. Crossings become harder. The environment becomes more intimidating for the children who are still walking or biking. The cycle reinforces itself.
The more we design school commutes for cars, the less normal walking and biking become — and the more necessary driving appears.
What Do Children Lose When We Drive Them Everywhere?
Walking or biking to school isn't just transportation. It's also a small piece of independence. A child walking to school has to decide when to cross the street, recognize familiar landmarks, navigate a route, interact with other people, solve small problems, and eventually figure out how to get somewhere without an adult doing it for them. Those experiences seem ordinary precisely because they are ordinary.
But research on children's independent mobility has found that the built environment, traffic conditions, parental concerns, and neighborhood characteristics all influence whether children are able to move around independently. When every trip happens in the back seat of a car, children's everyday opportunities for independence disappear.
There is a physical cost as well. Walking and biking turn transportation into everyday exercise. A child doesn't necessarily need a sports program or a gym to get that activity. The school trip itself becomes part of a healthy routine.
A sidewalk can be exercise infrastructure. A bike route can be a tool for independence. A safe street can be part of a child's development.
By not allowing children to walk to school, we take away one of the most fundamental ways children get exercise.
What Makes a Route "Safe"?
This is where Safe Routes to School (SRTS) becomes important. It's tempting to think that the solution is simply teaching children how to behave around traffic:
Look both ways.
Wear bright clothing.
Stay alert.
Make eye contact with a driver.
Use the crosswalk.
Although putting responsibility on the child to stay safe, we also need to consider the other side of the coin: What should the street do to make the right behavior easier?
A safe route to school might mean shorter crossings, slower vehicle speeds, protected bicycle infrastructure, better visibility, good lighting, shade, clear signs, and places where children can comfortably wait. The idea is simple: instead of asking children to adapt to streets designed primarily for cars, design the streets so that children can use them safely.
There is evidence that SRTS programs can work. A study of Safe Routes to School projects in Eugene, Oregon, found that programs combining education with street improvements such as sidewalks, crosswalks, bike parking, and other infrastructure were associated with increases in walking and biking of 5–20 percentage points.
Another study examining New York City's Safe Routes to School interventions found that pedestrian injury rates during school travel hours decreased substantially in areas that received interventions.
The lesson is that systematically improving the physical environment matters in increasing rates of walking and biking.
A School Alone Cannot Solve the Problem
A successful Safe Routes to School program can't depend entirely on a few enthusiastic parents, or a school, or a city alone. The route to school crosses city boundaries, intersections, neighborhoods, and sometimes entire transportation systems. That means schools, families, city planners, police, transportation agencies, and communities have to work together, and they each have a unique role to play.
Parents can organize walking buses or bike groups.
Schools can communicate SRTS activities to parents.
Teachers can do travel tallies to gather data.
City transportation engineers can improve road safety at crossings, sidewalks, bike infrastructure, and school zones.
City police can enforce safe driver behavior on routes to school.
Cities and schools can make maps of safe routes for walking and biking.
Parents can identify the locations that feel uncomfortable or unsafe and report those places to the city.
The Bigger Idea
There is something revealing about Safe Routes to School. If we need special programs to convince people that children should be able to walk or bike to school – something that should be completely natural to them – then there is something very wrong with our environment.
A child shouldn't need extraordinary courage to walk a mile through their own neighborhood. Parents shouldn't have to choose between their child's independence and their child's safety.
The goal of SRTS is not to get every child to walk or bike to school, but rather, to make the choice possible. Given the same built environment, distance from school, and weather, some families may find that walking or biking to school is the best option, while some other families may still drive. However, we want to make the choice to walk or bike available to everyone. Safe Routes to School is about much more than school. It's about asking what kind of streets we want our children to grow up in.
Safe Routes to School in Sunnyvale
Sunnyvale has had a Safe Routes to School program since 2008, but its level of activity and community involvement has changed over the years (you can learn more about the history of SRTS in Sunnyvale in our earlier article). After a long period of inactivity, the program is now trying to reboot.
The City has launched a new Safe Routes to School website with information about school routes, crossing guards, upcoming bike and pedestrian safety programs, and ways to get involved. The City is also forming SRTS Working Groups with schools, families, City staff, and community members. Meetings are open to the public, making them an opportunity for parents, teachers, and residents to share concerns, suggest improvements, and help shape what Safe Routes to School looks like in Sunnyvale. Join the next community working group meeting noted on the city's event calendar:
What: Sunnyvale SRTS Community Working Group Meeting When: October 28, 2026, 4-5 pm Where: DPS Headquarters, 700 All America Way, Sunnyvale
About the Author
Daria Mukhachova has a passion about doing urbanism right. She believes that streets should be designed for people first. That means creating places where walking, biking and taking transit are safe, comfortable, and enjoyable, while still supporting occasions when driving is necessary.
