The Town of Blacksburg, Montgomery County Public Schools, the YMCA, Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, and Blacksburg New School are developing a pilot Safe Routes To School program to encourage children to walk or bike to school.

Safe Routes to School is a national movement supported by federal grants which can provide a variety of important benefits to children and their community, including increasing physical activity, reducing traffic congestion, improving air quality and enhancing neighborhood safety.

Safe Routes to School will be implemented as a pilot program in two schools, Gilbert Linkous Elementary and Blacksburg New School. Encouraging children to walk or bike to school requires strategies to identify and remove barriers. These strategies include education, encouragement, enforcement, evaluation, and engineering solutions. A school travel plan has been developed for these two schools identifying strategies to be employed to increase the number of children walking or biking to school.

A proposed travel plan has been developed for the two participating schools. The plan includes education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation of the program in addition to engineering projects proposed for creating safer routes to school. To review and offer feedback on the plan, there are two public input opportunities:

Thursday, November 20, 2008

3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Blacksburg New School, 2500 North Main Street.
5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, 813Toms Creek Road.