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Whether they really want to go to school or not, students in the village of Dunlap could at least have a safe and fun way to do so in future years.
As part of the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Safe Routes to School program, the Dunlap Village Board has applied for funding that would allow the implementation of a sidewalk to run down Legion Hall Road connecting the Copperfield subdivision and Dunlap Grade School.
“The sidewalk will allow students to get from Copperfield to the grade school but it also will tie in Dunlap Middle, the high school, athletic facilities as well as the library and the Rock Island trail,” said Dunlap Village Board Trustee Sheila Taylor.
“The main objective is to get students safely to school but also allow them to access other facilities as well.”
Currently the only portion of sidewalk along Legion Hall Road is on the north side but it does not connect to the grade school or to Copperfield. Of the 391 students that attend DGS, 91 of them live in the Copperfield subdivision.
“All of those residents who would walk from Copperfield have to walk on Legion Hall Road,” Taylor said. “With the amount of traffic we have anymore, it’s not a safe situation for them.”
The Safe Routes to School program is a federally funded program that started in 2006 for Illinois and was extended to run through the end of 2010. After this cycle, IDOT will have approved $30 million worth of projects over the past few years.
The SRTS projects are 100 percent funded from the program; no communities are asked to partially cover or match any funds awarded unless their project exceeds what they applied for.
The application to receive funding is a two-step process that asks communities and school districts to first submit a School Travel Plan, which focuses on building a framework for the second leg of the plan.
“(The STP is) like a map because what it does is provide you a framework to determine what you’re already doing to promote biking and walking to make it safe for kids, what you need to do and where to go to make it successful in the short term and long term,” said IDOT SRTS Coordinator Megan Holt Swanson.
The STP is a comprehensive application taking into account what IDOT calls the five Es: engineering, evaluation, education, enforcement and evaluation. Swanson said the SRTS program will be successful if the applicants implement something from each section.
Whether they really want to go to school or not, students in the village of Dunlap could at least have a safe and fun way to do so in future years.
As part of the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Safe Routes to School program, the Dunlap Village Board has applied for funding that would allow the implementation of a sidewalk to run down Legion Hall Road connecting the Copperfield subdivision and Dunlap Grade School.
“The sidewalk will allow students to get from Copperfield to the grade school but it also will tie in Dunlap Middle, the high school, athletic facilities as well as the library and the Rock Island trail,” said Dunlap Village Board Trustee Sheila Taylor.
“The main objective is to get students safely to school but also allow them to access other facilities as well.”
Currently the only portion of sidewalk along Legion Hall Road is on the north side but it does not connect to the grade school or to Copperfield. Of the 391 students that attend DGS, 91 of them live in the Copperfield subdivision.
“All of those residents who would walk from Copperfield have to walk on Legion Hall Road,” Taylor said. “With the amount of traffic we have anymore, it’s not a safe situation for them.”
The Safe Routes to School program is a federally funded program that started in 2006 for Illinois and was extended to run through the end of 2010. After this cycle, IDOT will have approved $30 million worth of projects over the past few years.
The SRTS projects are 100 percent funded from the program; no communities are asked to partially cover or match any funds awarded unless their project exceeds what they applied for.
The application to receive funding is a two-step process that asks communities and school districts to first submit a School Travel Plan, which focuses on building a framework for the second leg of the plan.
“(The STP is) like a map because what it does is provide you a framework to determine what you’re already doing to promote biking and walking to make it safe for kids, what you need to do and where to go to make it successful in the short term and long term,” said IDOT SRTS Coordinator Megan Holt Swanson.
The STP is a comprehensive application taking into account what IDOT calls the five Es: engineering, evaluation, education, enforcement and evaluation. Swanson said the SRTS program will be successful if the applicants implement something from each section.
Now that the STP, which acts as a preliminary proposal, has been submitted and accepted by IDOT, the next step is to submit the funding application by Dec. 15.
There is an IDOT committee that reviews and scores each funding application based on the need of a sidewalk in the community, the potential to reduce child injuries, the encouragement of biking and walking to school, and the identification of safety hazards that may prohibit students from walking.
In 2008, IDOT awarded $13.7 million for 171 projects, even though 376 projects were submitted asking for nearly $28 million. That is where the problem with the program lies, but it is one that Swanson said they just have to deal with.
“It’s a double-edged sword because the program is so popular it is over-subscribed,” Swanson said.
“We could have great applications that aren’t funded just because we don’t have the money to fund that project.”
The goal of the SRTS program is not just to give communities a bag of money to build the sidewalks and leave it at that. Swanson insists on educating everyone in the community not only on the importance of the sidewalks, but also on how to use them so everyone stays safe.
“We don’t fund salaries for police/cross guards, but use equipment to better address speeding issues and for cross guards to make sure they know what they are doing and are safe,” Swanson said.
Taylor said the village board and schools are planning on implementing some kind of educational component in their plan.
“There will definitely be an educational component where we educate students at the grade school on how to safely walk and bike to school,” Taylor said.
“We’d like to have some training at the high school level for students who are taking driver’s training to emphasize how to safely drive when there are pedestrians.”
Swanson said the board is supposed to make their final decisions on which communities will receive funding toward the middle or end of 2011. She said it is important for the whole community to embrace the project, make it a collaborative effort and involve multiple stakeholders.
Taylor and the rest of the village board are trying to do exactly that.
“It’s been a village sponsored plan, but because of the scope of the SRTS program we definitely needed the schools support for this program as well,” Taylor said.
“We have a wide variety of team members from the community (library board members, Dunlap Rec Association members and parents) who are all collaborating to try to improve our community.”
