City of Arlington Awarded Nearly $2.5 Million Federal Grant for Safe Routes to School Initiatives
The City of Arlington has been awarded a $2,472,500 federal grant to create a Safe Routes to School master plan that will cover all 97 public schools in the city limits and to make and test roadway safety improvements near two elementary schools.
Arlington, which is in the process of creating a safety action plan called Safe Streets Arlington, was among 99 communities awarded a total of $63 million in U.S. Department of Transportation grants in May through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program. These grants are designed to help communities improve road safety and prevent deaths and serious injuries on their roads.
“Bicyclists, pedestrians, and drivers should be safe on our roads and streets, and the Biden-Harris Administration is taking action across the country to make our roads safer for everyone who uses them," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Thanks to our Safe Streets for All grants, communities across the country are improving their roads so they can be safely shared by bikes, cars, and pedestrians, and this latest round of funding will make it possible for 99 communities to implement roadway safety measures that help save more lives.”
Arlington is home to 97 schools across three school districts and several charter school networks. The City’s Safer Routes to School master plan will evaluate sidewalks, ramps, signalized intersections, signage related to school zones, crossing guards, pedestrian crosswalks, and school drop-off and pick-up times in the attendance zones for each school. The City will also work to identify possible high-risk areas by evaluating routes taken by students and families to school. This information will help the City to seek state or federal grant funding and to prioritize funding for repairs, maintenance or installation of new safety measures. During the project, set to run from January 2025 to December 2026, Arlington will also gather community input to ensure strategic safety improvements are implemented that benefit the students and the community.
In addition to developing the Safer Routes to School master plan, Arlington will use its grant funding to make and test roadway safety improvements around the Speer and Thornton Elementary School campuses. Because these elementary schools have compact attendance zones that do not exceed the two-mile radius for the Arlington Independent School District to provide school bus service, all children attending these campuses must walk, bike or be driven to school. The City’s planned measures during the testing phase could include crosswalk painting, signage, removing obstacles that block visual lines of sight for drivers, special pavement treatments to slow drivers down and make them more aware of vulnerable roadway users, and temporary traffic calming elements such as speed humps. Demonstrating these types of treatments will both improve safety for Speer and Thornton schools and also provide valuable data to the City on how these tools could be used elsewhere to improve safety.
The City of Arlington was awarded two other Safe Streets and Roads for All grants in 2022 and 2023. A $385,000 grant is allowing Arlington to update its Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Transition Plan by evaluating existing facilities, programs, services, and activities. This effort also includes a comprehensive condition assessment of all Arlington’s sidewalks and pedestrian facilities to develop Arlington’s first comprehensive Sidewalk Master Plan. Arlington also received a $240,000 grant to complete a roadway safety action plan with the goal to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on City roadways for all users, including drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists.
Click here to learn more about the Safe Streets Arlington initiative.
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