Dear parents, caregivers, educators, and community,
Tomorrow is Winter Walk + Roll to School Day! Join us as we walk to school, together.
Why walk to school in the winter? It is a great way to stay active during the long winter months and take notice of the changes in our neighborhoods throughout the seasons. Dress in your cold-weather clothes, grab a hot drink, and tag us (@saferoutespdx) in your Winter Walk + Roll to School Day social media posts and stories so we can share your success with our Portland Safe Routes to School community!
Safe Routes to School Team | Brittany, Dana, Gui, Janis, Jeri, Josh, and Meaghan
In this newsletter
- Personal safety resources
- $1.5 million for safe crossings in David Douglas School District
- Opportunities for high school students
- Spread the traffic safety love this Valentine's Day
- Pedestrian safety education in more Centennial and Portland Public schools
- Students are helping us make our curriculum more relevant and engaging
- More events, grants, and opportunities
- Parkrose street art mural and traffic safety project is complete
- Job and volunteer postings
- What we're reading
We want to help create a transportation system that allows all people to feel safe getting where they need to go. Check out our webpage full of resources that address personal safety on our streets, including information about how to:
- report a non-urgent traffic safety concern,
- sign-up for a personal safety workshop,
- report a bias incident or hate crime,
- stand up against street harassment, and more.
Portland is a sanctuary city. The City of Portland's Immigration & Refugee Program offers free legal services and has information about how to report violations of Oregon's sanctuary laws. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center created “Red Cards” to help people assert their rights and defend themselves.
PDX 311 is available to help with any local government questions or service needs. Staff are fluent in English, Spanish, Romanian, and Tagalog and have resources for additional languages.
Oregon Safe Routes to School recently awarded Portland Bureau of Transportation's Safe Routes to School program a $1.5 million Competitive Construction Grant to make intersection improvements at SE Stark Street and 135th Avenue. This is a key connection for David Douglas High, Lincoln Park Elementary, and North Powellhurst school student and families. The project will help create a safer crossing for people walking, biking, and rolling. Improvements include: a new traffic signal (with Pedestrian Head Starts and bicycle detection), a median island in the turn lane, a bike and transit curb extension, a concrete protected bike lane, marked crossings, curb ramp upgrades (for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance), and supplemental overhead lighting as needed.
Why does this matter? The SE Stark Street and 135th Avenue intersection currently lacks signalization, marked crosswalks, and 80% of vehicles travel over the posted 30 mph on SE Stark.
Teens in the Driver Seat Driving the Message Contest
Due Friday, Feb. 14
This year's Teens in the Driver Seat, a peer-to-peer safety program for America's youth, Driving the Message Contest will give middle and high school students an opportunity to showcase their creative talents. Students have a chance to win prizes of up to $1,500 plus an opportunity to have a professional film crew re-produce a video you create!
Oregon Safe Routes to School High School Task Force
Apply by Friday, Feb. 14
Oregon Safe Routes to School is recruiting five high school students to participate in a task force to help create safer routes to school for high school students across the state. They will be leaders in their schools developing skills in teamwork, problem solving, and advocacy. This task force will get the opportunity to work with experts in the transportation field, including public officials, and make a mark in their high school community.
Portland BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador
Apply by Friday, Feb. 21.
Portland Safe Routes to School is currently recruiting for the BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program. This is a new opportunity for Parkrose, Roosevelt, and McDaniel high school students to get paid ($16/hour) to develop leadership skills, promote healthy lifestyles, and fulfill their Career-Related Learning Experience requirement while teaching their peers how to use Portland's BIKETOWN bike-share system. To be eligible for the program, students must be at least 16 years old and committed to working 20 hours between April and June. This program is made possible through an Oregon Safe Routes to School education grant.
Oregon Safe Routes to School statewide sticker contest
Due by Friday, Feb. 28
Oregon Safe Routes to School is inviting Oregon high school students to design a creative and eye-catching sticker that encourages students to walk, bike, ride transit, or carpool to school. The sticker will be part of their new campaign to promote sustainable transportation and safer routes to school. The winning design will be used on stickers that will be distributed in high schools across the state of Oregon.
Project Yellow Light scholarship competition
Due Saturday, March 1 and Tuesday, April 1
People know distracted driving is dangerous, but they do it anyway. As a Project Yellow Light applicant you have one clear mission: create a public service announcement to encourage your friends to avoid distracted driving, specifically using your phone while driving. Scholarships range from $2,000 to $8,000.
We’re inviting school communities across Portland to share the love this Valentine's Day and thank one another for being sweet on the street!
Print and share our custom Valentine’s Day-inspired cards with students, parents, caregivers, and staff at morning drop-off as a way to offer gratitude for and encourage safe travel decisions. Each card has traffic safety messages listed on the back, e.g., "organize groups to walk, bike, or roll to school together," "stop for crossing guards, safety patrols, and school buses," and "watch for families crossing the street."
Why? Because we know making safer travel decisions aren’t always easy, but they are always sweet.
We're happy to report that teachers at both Centennial School District's Patrick Lynch Elementary School and Portland Public Schools' Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School led pedestrian safety education in their classrooms for the first time this winter. PE teacher Robert Bentley found the pedestrian safety education unit valuable for his Patrick Lynch students. He's incorporated pedestrian safety education lessons, such as walking opposite to oncoming traffic, into his daily warmup to help kids strengthen this traffic safety skills. Robert plans to continue incorporating the teaching material in his class as mini lessons throughout the year.
To make our Transportation Academy curriculum more relevant and engaging, we brought in the experts! Students in Cleveland High School's Transit to Trails Club and McDaniel High School's Cycling Club participated in focus groups to share their feedback on our driver safety module. These students shared that the module's Jeopardy game made the lesson exciting. They learned new information about how the city implements speed limits and other traffic safety infrastructure on our streets.
Portland Safe Routes to School's Transportation Academy, made possible by Metro's Regional Travel Options grant, is a unique program for high school students in Portland Public and Parkrose school districts to learn about transportation, climate, equity, civic engagement, and more outside the classroom. The academy provides practical ways for students to get around their neighborhoods and the city, but is also designed to increase pedestrian, bicyclist, and driver safety to reduce serious and deadly crashes.
Rose City Self-Defense youth personal safety classes
Registration opens Tuesday, March 4
Rose City Self-Defense empowers girls, women and the LGBTQ+ community. Youth-based classes are open to ages 11-14. Two-part series classes are available in April, May, and June in neighborhoods across the city. All programming is free!
Metro Regional Travel Options small grants
Applications reviewed on a rolling basis
Metro Regional Travel Options (RTO) small grants fund specific, one-time purchases of materials and services to support events, education, and outreach activities ranging from $500 (Safe Routes to School micro-grants) to $5,000 (RTO mini-grants). Only individual schools and Parent Teacher Organizations may apply for Safe Routes to School micro-grants.
Construction on the NE 131st Place and Prescott Drive: Traffic Calming and Community Placemaking project in Parkrose's Argay Terrace neighborhood was recently completed. Speeding, other unsafe driving behaviors, and increased gun violence on this stretch of road near Shaver Elementary School have long concerned Parkrose neighbors. This unique project incorporates art, traffic calming, and community-building to improve traffic safety.
- Speed bumps
- Concrete traffic circle
- Large street art mural
Informed by community needs
In 2023, The Pathfinder Network held a 9-week training for Parkrose High School students affected by gun violence called Think Outside the Box for Our Blocks. Youth created designs for a street art mural and identified placemaking elements that could bring positive change to their neighborhood—specifically the 131st Place and Prescott Drive intersection. The Pathfinder Network worked with Parkrose High School Art Club students to practice street art mural painting styles, draft ideas based on a community survey, and mock-up the design.
Made possible by many partners
- City of Portland's Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design ($120,000)
- Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Initiative ($25,000)
- Portland Bureau of Transportation ($10,000)
- Argay Terrace Neighborhood Association
- City Repair
- Elevate Oregon
- Historic Parkrose
- Parkrose High School Art Club
- The Pathfinder Network
The City of Portland posts new job opportunities every Monday.
Public Realm Permitting Lead
Apply by Monday, Feb. 10
Portland Bureau of Transportation's (PBOT) Public Realm Permitting Lead will support the bureau's and the city's mission to support city livability, placemaking, and economic vitality through the processing and permitting of permits within PBOT’s public realm programs, including community events, block parties, play streets, stewardships, public art, and public street plazas.
Ceasefire Program Manager
Apply by Monday, Feb. 17
The Ceasefire Program Manager oversees the implementation and coordination of the Ceasefire program within the Public Safety service area. The program has two primary goals: 1) reduce shootings and homicides and 2) decrease recidivism and incarceration rates among participants. This position ensures the program operates in alignment with evidence-based practices and achieves its goals of reducing gun violence and recidivism.
- What if we thought of our daily commute as a team sport? (Behavioral Scientist)
- Does car dependence make people unsatisfied with life? Evidence from a U.S. national survey (Travel Behaviour and Society)
- How a century-old traffic policy made streets deadly for pedestrians (Fast Company)
- Gun violence exposure on walkable routes to and from school (Back to School Shootings)
- Report: A record-number of kids were killed on NYC streets last year (Streetsblog)
- Why right turns on red are bad for traffic safety (Planetizen)
- What happens to kids when their schools are destroyed? (Vox)
- Young people are suffering from climate anxiety. Here’s how to help. (Yale Climate Connections)
- What happened to hanging out on the street? (Bloomberg CityLab)