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Monday, May 13, 2013

How Easy Is Biking Near You? Here's A Bikeability Checklist


Here's a checklist to help evaluate the ease and safety of biking in your community.  Perhaps your own route to work or the library or your kids' route to school.  It even has suggestions for how to improve things.  One might be to send this to your local city council members - but fill it out first so they can see how your route scored.




There's also a Walkability Checklist.  And both checklists are also available in Spanish here.

How did I find this? I got an Alaska Department of Transportation press release. I tried to paraphrase it, but I'm not completely sure what it means so I'll just quote the paragraph for you:
"The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT&PF) Safe Routes to School Program is pleased to announce that 69 schools participated statewide in the event, which ranks sixth in the nation for the total number of participating schools per state; besting several states with much larger populations and much fairer weather, such as Texas and Arizona."
 I don't think this means the most kids biking to school in a state, but rather the most participating schools.  I called the number for more info and left a message, so I can clarify this later.  And maybe even get a link to the rankings which I couldn't find. 

Poking around their links I did find that Alaska has been getting about $1 million a year for this program.  I can't find details on what they did with the money, but presumably it goes to making walking and biking routes to school safer.  There was a program about getting reflective tape onto kids' coats so they can be better seen during the dark months. 

Here's a list of all the states' federal funding on this. 

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