The Northfield Public Schools, the City of Northfield, the City of Dundas, and Bridgewater Township have received a $30,000 Safe Routes to Schools grant. The grant is one of 27 that were awarded throughout the state of Minnesota. During this round of funding, 105 grant proposals were submitted to the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

The Safe Routes to Schools program seeks to make conditions safer for children who walk or bike to school and also expand the number of students who do so. The title of the Northfield Safe Routes project is PaTHS: Pathways to Healthier Students: Planning Enhanced Access to Northfield Schools.

The Northfield area grant is a non-infrastructure grant, which means that it won’t be used to make infrastructure improvements. Instead it will focus on planning for possible future improvements, as well as the creation of education, law enforcement, encouragement, and evaluation programs that will foster physically active modes of travel to and from school.

The Northfield Area Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, on which I serve as chair, presented the idea for the grant proposal to the Northfield Public Schools and local governments. All parties worked together to complete the proposal, with the task force managing the effort. Our thanks go out to all who helped, especially to Tom Stringer and Superintendent Chris Richardson of the school district, Joel Walinski of the City of Northfield, and Christopher Tassava of Carleton College. Carleton allowed Christopher, a professional grant writer, to donate work time to the project.

For more information on the Safe Routes grant, see a March 22 Northfield News article (which I found online but not in print), the school district press release, and MnDOT’s Safe Routes to Schools web site. See also an earlier post I did following the submission of the grant proposal.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 10:41 am and is filed under Biking/Walking, Minnesota, Northfield.