Is Franklin ready for Safe Routes to School?

Rabbit path: The current walking/biking route from the Hillendale subdivision to Pleasant View Elementary

Last night the Franklin Trails Committee, of which I am a member, met for the second time since its formation. It's mission is to address the creation of a pedestrian and bike path or trail on or near 51st street between Rawson and Drexel, while also discussing citywide non-vehicular connectivity.

The very first hurdle the Committee - and, by extension, the city of Franklin - needs to overcome is the outdated idea of bike and walking paths as purely recreational. Alderman Tim Solomon, a fellow member of the Trails Committee and also on the Parks Commission, seems especially prone to seeing non-vehicular trails as frivolous park-type amenities rather than vital elements of infrastructure. After all, up until now the city's trails have been under the direction of the Parks Commission, and our street system is notoriously unfriendly (read: deadly) to pedestrians and bikes.

After Alderman Solomon traced on a map a winding, Parks-proposed trail that eventually empties out onto 27th street, I was emphatic about defining the difference between UTILITY trails - which I believe the Trails Committee is charged with creating - and pure RECREATIONAL trails, which, while of great interest to me personally, do nothing whatsoever to facilitate the kind of connectivity in the city that will in turn encourage economic development. The trail Solomon traced described a potentially wonderful, winding course though fields and woodlands, but ultimately led from nowhere to nowhere - - another path where we need to build a parking lot next to it, perhaps?

I'd brought to the meeting a fairly voluminous amount of information on the state and federal Safe Routes to School program and associated grants. It's been clear for some time now that the area surrounding Pleasant View Elementary, which is a few hundred yards from 51st street, is woefully ill-equipped for accommodating non-vehicular traffic of kids and their parents who live mere blocks away (the entire city of Franklin is, of course, declared an unusually hazardous transportation area by the County Sheriff). Solving the 51st street conundrum and adding simple trails through currently unused land south of the school as well as improving crossings to the north on Rawson will make it possible for children in the subdivisions surrounding Pleasant View to choose to walk or bike to school and add connectivity to commercial sites on Rawson that could do with some foot traffic.

(Think this is an easy problem to tackle? Readers of this blog are aware of the torturous hand-wringing over whether to connect east toward 51st street or, inexplicably, send traffic through Hillendale subdivision.)

It turns out that the city has grant money available to build a sidewalk on the east side of 51st street from Drexel to Claire Meadows - - which seems fairly useless until you consider extending a path east from the West Evergreen stub-road through the vacant land south of Pleasant View.

Safe Routes to School offers fairly substantial grant dollars, but in order to have a chance at getting those funds the community - especially school officials - need to commit to a SRTS program that offers resources on everything from polling parents on their attitudes regarding walking or biking to suggesting sign placement and speed-abatement enforcement options.

So, in order to capture grant funds to help pay for improvements, Job One is to get the school administration on board with the Safe Routes to School program. Cross your fingers.

(See also Franklin Today.)

Comments

[Design New Haven]

you should try posting this on SeeClickFix! here's an example of how it is being used for bike/walking route planning:
http://seeclickfix.com/issues/8658.html

This gets gov't, media and community groups all engaged in a way never seen before.

[John Michlig]

Good idea - I'd thought the SeeClickFix app was more about potholes, but now I see that it has a much, much wider scope.