Safe Routes to School in Rockingham County

Rockingham County:

“Safe Routes to School (SRTS) projects have been completed at Mountain View Elementary in Rockingham County and Plains Elementary in Timberville.  At Mountain View Elementary improvements included the addition of a new sidewalk, curb & gutter, ADA curb cuts with associated crosswalks, signing and pavement markings, and the installation of pedestrian signals at the Erickson Avenue and Rawley Springs (Rt. 33) intersection.

  

In Timberville, the improvements included a five-foot concrete sidewalk, curb and gutter improvements, and a stream crossing along American Legion Drive. Other improvements included curb ramps, crosswalk pavement and sign installation, high visibility crosswalk markings, and flashing school beacons installed at the school entrance.

Safe Routes to Schools is a federally-funded program administered by the Virginia Department of Transportation designed to encourage kindergarten through 8th grade students to walk or bike to school by creating a safer and more appealing transportation alternative through biking and walking.  Other SRTS program goals are to improve safety and reduce traffic, fuel consumption, and air pollution in the vicinity of schools.  CSPDC staff assisted the County and the Town with grant administration and project management for these two SRTS projects.”

~ Central Shenandoah PDC

Norton set to begin safe route work

City of Norton

“A project years in the making is about to begin in Norton, Va., and will ultimately make walking from downtown to community facilities safer, city leaders said. The $4 million project will transform the sidewalk at the intersection of Park Avenue Northwest and Park Avenue Southeast on U.S. Highway 23. It started as a Safe Routes to School project, which is a federal program to help make walking to school safer, said Norton City Manager Fred Ramey. The sidewalk leads from downtown Norton to the city’s elementary and middle school complex as well as a community center and recreation fields.

And as officials started work on the sidewalk — which currently is narrow and separated from the road by a chain link fence — they discovered that the rocks in the hillside above were unstable. The area had been part of a surface mine, Ramey said. So the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy got involved and the two projects have merged, Ramey said. The DMME is paying $3 million of construction costs and the Virginia Department of Transportation is picking up $1 million of the tab, he added.

The sidewalk will expand from 4 to 10 feet wide. ‘That allows it to be a multi-use sidewalk,’ Ramey said. ‘Two bikes could pass on it.’ A wall will separate the sidewalk from the road, and a terraced wall system will stabilize the slope, he said.”

~Writes Allie Robinson Gibson of the Bristol Herald Courier

Click here to learn more