Kris Strickler is the director of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). Comments can be directed to 888-Ask-ODOT or Ask.ODOT@odot.state.or.us

Our transportation system doesn’t always serve our most vulnerable users. I believe that every child deserves a safe way to walk, bike or roll to school. Our Safe Routes to School program is making that a reality for more and more students every year.

The Safe Routes to School program helps make it easier for kids to safely travel and play in their neighborhoods by installing sidewalks, marked crosswalks, bike lanes and other safety enhancements, as well as providing safety education and encouragement activities.

We’ve been working to make the transportation system safer for children for several decades, and we received a significant boost six years ago when the Oregon Legislature provided dedicated, permanent funding to this cause allowing us to invest in these communities like never before.

In Powers, for example, a $787,000 award funded upgrades that ran through nearly half the town, creating sidewalks and bike lanes along main street. In Gervais, a $182,000 project added solar-powered flashing beacons and two crosswalks and improved the surrounding sidewalks. In Portland, our support helped Parkrose High School students learn about safe, multimodal transportation. These are just a few examples of projects making a real difference. You can check out the details of Safe Routes to School projects on an interactive map on our website.

Another way our Safe Routes to School program helps keep kids safe is through education and encouragement efforts, like the “walking school bus.” In a walking school bus, an adult leads a group of students walking to and from school. Recently, some schools have started launching “bike school buses” as well. These efforts can encourage kids and adults to try out an active way of getting around their neighborhood and help students start out the day energized and ready to learn.

The Safe Routes to School program consistently has more need than funding available. In just the last round of construction awards, applicants requested $80 million. We had $32.4 million to award, so $48 million in needs went unfunded: and that’s just from one round of funding.

The scale of the need is one reason we’ve prioritized lower-income schools and communities. We don’t choose projects based on whether the road is state or locally owned, but we do want to make sure that an improvement will have the biggest impact possible on our most disadvantaged communities.

To that end, we provide flexibility in the matching funds required for an individual project, which allows more lower-income schools and communities to apply for assistance.

We’ve created safer travel to and from schools and developed educational programs that support safe travel in communities near and far, from Warrenton to John Day, Brookings to Hillsboro, La Grande to Merrill, and points in between. Since 2008, we’ve funded 293 projects for more than $109.6 million.

While our focus is on improving safety for children, the truth is that we all benefit from a safer, more accessible transportation system that encourages us to walk, bike, and roll. We all enjoy the benefits: less congestion, lower greenhouse gas emissions, improved safety, a healthier environment, more livable communities, support for active lifestyles — and more. In other words, the Safe Routes to School program has broad support because it offers just about everything you’d want to see in a transportation system worthy of support.