Kansas DOT Issues ‘Safe Routes to School’ Plan

The Kansas Department of Transportation recently published its first ‘Safe Routes to School’ or SRTS Strategic Action Plan; a blueprint for helping more students statewide walk, bike, and roll to and from school through public awareness campaigns, municipal partnerships, and community tool kits.

[Above image by Kansas DOT]

That plan includes broad goals of reaching more students, creating more partnerships, and supporting communities in planning and infrastructure needs. It also spells out specific strategies, from providing educational materials and developing a statewide crossing guard study, to producing planning and engineering toolkits for communities to use, the agency said.

“This plan details our commitment to providing resources that help support safe communities for students and families of all backgrounds and abilities,” Ann Katt, Kansas DOT’s SRTS coordinator, said in a news release.

Children who walk, bike, or roll to school tend to be physically and mentally healthier and perform better in school, Kansas DOT noted.

The agency added that its SRTS program also saves families money, improves traffic safety and air quality, and increases personal safety – doubly important in rural states such as Kansas, where many small communities lack the transportation options of suburban or urban areas.

Kansas also has a great number of “frontier communities,” which are defined as rural areas with 12 to 20 persons per square mile that are 30-90 minutes travel time to a service or market.

Fewer students walk, bike or roll to school today than 50 or 60 years ago, Kansas DOT pointed out, especially in rural communities. “The SRTS program works to reverse this trend through a holistic set of strategies commonly known as the Es: education, encouragement, engineering, engagement, evaluation, equity, and enforcement,” the agency’s SRTS plan noted.

Kansas DOT’s SRTS program has been around since 2005, but its scope narrowed after it was discontinued as a federally funded stand-alone program in 2012.

While the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 did not restore SRTS as a stand-alone program, it did emphasize SRTS in other bill elements, prompting Kansas DOT and other state departments of transportation? – including Oregon, Ohio, and Massachusetts – to take a second look at their state programs.

In 2023, Kansas DOT rebooted the program, hiring a full-time SRTS coordinator and a consultant to help with planning. Then the department recruited advisory committee members from the active transportation community, schools, law enforcement, and equity and safety advocates.

In the second half of 2024, the agency led a “stakeholder involvement process” that included a best practice review, statewide online survey, focus groups, and advisory committee workshops. From the data gathered through that process, the department built its Strategic Action Plan.

On the funding side, Kansas DOT awards state-funded “Planning and Programming” grants to help communities create SRTS plans. Through funding via the federal Transportation Alternatives Program, Kansas DOT provides technical resources and funding for SRTS infrastructure projects such as walking paths, biking lanes, and sidewalks.

Since revitalizing the program, Kansas DOT has awarded “Planning and Programming” grant funding to 11 communities for planning and consultant services to start SRTS programs. In 2024, the agency funded at least $18 million in active transportation infrastructure projects near schools and for specific SRTS programs.