Oregon has become a national leader walking and biking to school. Our state had the highest rate of school participation out of 48 states in America who participated in International Walk and Roll to School Day on October 7th.
The news comes from from the Oregon Department of Transportation and is based on numbers from the National Center for Safe Routes to School. That organization crunched data from the 2024 event and found that 210 schools registered for the event out of a total of 921 K-8 public schools. That percentage was higher than California, Virginia, Washington D.C., and Massachusetts.
“The enthusiasm for Walk & Roll to School Day across Oregon reflects our shared dedication to building safer, more connected communities,” ODOT Safe Routes to School Program Manager Heidi Manlove said in a statement. The participation number is almost back to what it was prior to the Covid pandemic. In 2020, just 61 schools participated. But in 2019 the number was 263 schools.
Now imagine if ODOT actually funded the Safe Routes to School program at the level it needs.
It’s clear that House Bill 2017 (the previous transportation spending package passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2017) has helped spark more school-based biking and walking programs statewide. That bill carved out $10 million per year starting in 2018 and $15 million per year starting in 2023 from the State Highway Fund for Safe Routes to School. The funds are distributed through a grant program that can be used to build infrastructure projects or for educational and encouragement programs.
While the amount was unprecedented and hailed by advocates at the time, it’s not nearly enough to keep up with demand. On August 21st, ODOT’s own Safe Routes to School Advisory Committee wrote a letter to Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) Chair Julie Brown and ODOT Director Kris Strickler. The purpose of the letter was to push back on ODOT’s low-ball estimate for what the program needs going forward as lawmakers look to pass a new funding bill in 2025.
In a document shared at an October 16th meeting of the Joint Committee on Transportation Public and Active Transit Workgroup, ODOT pegged the annual Safe Routes to School need at $50 million per year. That number was based on the average of all project requests in each grant solicitation cycle since the passage of HB 2017.
But leaders of the ODOT Safe Routes to School Advisory Committee say that’s not enough. They say schools request five times the amount available every two-year cycle. In 2024 there were $138 million worth of grants requested for Oregon’s $30 million in available funds. “With this recent oversubscription, as well as the ongoing issue of cost increases for construction projects that we have had to mitigate for with our existing funds, we believe the investment in Safe Routes to School could benefit from up to $75 million per year over the next 30 years to effectively meet the needs of every school in the state.”
The fact that an ODOT committee is publicly asking for more money than ODOT themselves should raise eyebrows. It speaks to the frustration of having a very impactful and popular program that is starved for cash while ODOT continues to pour money into freeway expansion megaprojects statewide. At a meeting of the OTC last week, commissioners approved another $72 million for the $815 million (current estimate) I-205 Abernethy Bridge project — a project whose cost has risen 228% in recent years.
As insiders and lawmakers survey the political landscape ahead of the 2025 legislative session, the debates about program-level funding are likely to get heated. Governor Tina Kotek has outlined a budget that assumes the legislature will raise at least $1.75 billion to pay for transportation projects and programs like Safe Routes to School. But with ODOT saying they need twice that amount it’s unclear what they’ll sacrifice to get a bill passed.
Safe Routes to School is likely safe, but whether it gets the funding it truly deserves is anyone’s guess.
Thanks for reading.
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PBOT, Development Review and Alternative Review are helping increase this budget gap by refusing to require developer-paid improvements on some designated Safe Routes To School streets; in one neighborhood completely lacking sidewalks AR had the balls to say that pedestrian improvements were not necessary due to “established neighborhood pattern” – i.e., ain’t no sidewalks there now, so no need to add any!
This isn’t Nollan/Dolan, it isn’t a constrained-terrain issue, or a tree issue, it’s a simple rubbing of SW noses in it and smugly demonstrating SW will get no sidewalks, ever, as long as certain staff and.or staff attitudes remain.
I showed some residents how to look things up omline and pointed out that the street is listed as a primary investment route needing improvements by SRTS, to the tune of $497,184, yet AR refused to allow one piece of this project be built AS REQUIRED by the developer, which would have freed taxpayer monies up for more work, or work elsewhere.
The cruelty is the point.
Ya know, slavery was once an “estabished neighborhood pattern.” Too bad Abe Lincoln doesn’t work for PBOT…
Thanks for pointing out what I’ve always suspected: city gov’t goes out of its way to ensure that developers NEVER pay for street improvements, even though every other large city in the country – and even in Oregon – finds ways to do so.
You didn’t get the memo? Rich developers run this city and milk it for as much as they can.
Max trains – big tax money for developers
Street improvements – don’t have to cut into their profit for that
Bike parking in buildings – . . . . well you get the picture
Just remember, unlike other states/cities, Oregon has no limits on profits to be made by projects that receive tax money. Ka-ching!
County seems to do a good job of that also.
Sorry cct, which streets/schools in SW are you referring to? Context would be helpful. Thanks.
Thanks for covering this Jonathan. You are a treasure to Portland & Oregon
Anyone who follows alt-transportation in Oregon quickly realizes that the biggest obstacle to alternative transportation is …
ODOT!
If ODOT can find a way to degrade bike/ped access, they will pursue it with gusto. There are too many examples to list here.
Oregon certainly is a strange state. Here in NC, our state DOT is regulated by our state legislature, all of whom seem to get re-elected by the same morons who then expect different results. It’s nice to know that Oregon is different.
FYI, our NCDOT often cites Oregon DOT (as opposed to Ohio or Oklahoma) as being a very “liberal” and “progressive” state DOT, as if it’s a dirty thing. Just so you know.
PBOT just approved a new private school in southeast Portland knowing the expectation is that 90-100% of students will be from outside the neighborhood, arriving by automobile. The same will be true for faculty. Notably, this private religious school is on two different “neighborhood greenways” that are used by families going to/from the local public school, and the public library, and other neighborhood destinations. And as we know, school drop off and pick up is a choke point anytime it’s based on automobiles. So PBOT thinks that adding a few hundred more autos (again, those numbers were from PBOT’s assessment) onto the Greenway at exactly the same time every morning and afternoon will not have any impact on the safety of bicyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders, etc.
PBOT mindset is a bit like that Lake Wobegon joke – all the streets are straight and wide, all the drivers are courteous and safe, and all the roads are under capacity.
I dunno, cct, isn’t it possible that in Lake Wobegon the students might arrive by kayak and canoe?
Ha! Lois love it. This reminds me of a NJ engineer who decided to commute daily across the Hudson via folding bike and boat. Genius.
Actually, the vast majority of city streets are straight, at least block-by-block, aside from a few curves in SW and EP, and wide enough for two cars to pass each other; the vast majority of drivers and associated trips are safe – in reality you are far more likely to die or end up in the hospital for heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, and infectious diseases than you are for crashes of any sort, that Portland’s crash rate is not significantly worse than most other US cities of similar size – and as for courtesy, well, it’s not the Midwest, but at least it isn’t Philadelphia either; and the vast majority of Portland streets are well under capacity for most of the day – all day for most residential streets – so it might as well be true.
It’s a bit like Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery – if you can’t find it at Ralph’s, you can probably get along without it. How’s that hotdish? Yeah, not too bad? Youbetcha!
Kayak and canoes are ped/bikes, and the cars are cabin cruisers?
And David kindly points out the issue with using models that assume every situation is always like the norm. Narrow, curvy streets and straight ones that bring ped/bikes in conflict with cars at some known points of the day deserve more scrutiny, care and treatment than just ‘it should be fine.’ Sure, that street has a capacity of 1000/day and a current load of 700 – but what if 600 of those cars show up at 2 distinct time periods?
And ‘cars kill more people in other cities’ is hardly the critique you think it is.
The reason that school project gets approved like that is that city council changed the approval code from “MUST meet all criteria” including “safety for all modes, ” and it now reads “MOSTLY MEETS.” Guess who gets to decide if it ‘mostly meets’ the ped/bike safety of that greenway?
It wouldn’t kill PBOT to worst-case a scenario like the school mentioned above, and think of a few ameliorations… but it will kill people if they don’t.
Yeah, cct spot on. Traffic engineers traditionally live within manual guidelines, which dictate x design based on x speed. It’s often just a matter of fill in the blank. Traffic predictions can often be a pseudoscience that has had recent trouble in court because, ya know, evidence. Traffic simulators are my fav. Every car stays within its boundaries, stops at stop signs etc. My hope is that some day in the near future we will see traffic engineers use real world scenarios where x number of cars run red lights during a simulation (based on the current available evidence), and x number of pedestrians are struck due to failing to yield.
It’s a wondrous and clean world traffic engineering. But times they are a changin. Some day traffic engineers might not even be the lead person on a street design, what a shocking idea!