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Making Changes
Chronic Disease & Injury Prevention — Walk 2 School Day
How can I help make environmental changes in my
community?
By encouraging children and adults to complete walkabilty checklists, awareness on problemareas can be raised.
Checklists provide a way to easily record problems and identify
both immediate and long-term solutions. They can also be used to
share information with school and community leaders and the
media as well as generate community support and demonstrate a
need for grants, which are available for infrastructure
improvements. In some cases, data collected by students and
parents using the walkability checklist has been so compelling
that it was used to seek funding for engineering and enforcement
improvements.
Success Story
A stellar example of environmental change is within our own city of
Santa Ana. Students from Pio Pico Elementary School had been
working for a few years in addressing traffic safety issues
around their school. They used “Walkability Checklist” collected
on Walk to School Day to identify problem pedestrian safety
locations for children walking to and from school. They then
used this information to assist their public works agency in
developing grant applications to Caltrans for pedestrian safety
construction and improvement projects. Over 2 years, they
applied for and received over $700, 000 through the California
Safe Routes to School funding program. Projects included
upgrading school signage, new traffic signals, sidewalk repairs,
new streetlights and in-pavement lighted crosswalks at several
locations including Pio Pico and near other schools throughout
the city.
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