The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all aspects of our lives in the Bay Area and transit is no exception. In May, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) established the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force to guide the future of the Bay Area’s public transportation network as the region adjusts to new conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Safe Routes to School program five E’s framework started about 15 years ago and an additional E was added in recent years. The original E’s included: Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, Evaluation, and Engineering. The sixth E added later was Equity. As of June 2020, The national Safe Routes Partnership has officially dropped Enforcement as one of the 6 E’s.
 

On July 2nd, Safe Routes to Schools practitioners across the Bay Area met to discuss topics relevant to back to school during COVID-19. One of the ideas was to establish sub-working groups to dive deeper into specific topics. The sub-working groups will be facilitated by practitioners, and the structure will be decided upon by participants. The groups will meet independently and report back findings during quarterly Spare the Air Youth advisory meetings.

The Safe Routes Partnership has just released the first set of comprehensive guidance for implementing Safe Routes to School programs during the 2020-21 school year with a new guidebook, Back to School 2020: Recommendations for Safe Routes to School Programming. The guidebook offers guidance for Safe Routes to School and active transportation professionals,

Safe Routes practitioners are hard at work reimagining what their programs are going to look like this year. Here are some exciting resources from our partners: