Planning for smart Safe Routes to School : learning case of Georgian Acres Community Hub for Smart Mobility, Austin, Texas

Transit Deserts are places where there is a gap between the level of transit service (supply) and the transit needs of a particular population (demand) (Jiao, 2013). The relative lack of transit service in such places can be especially troubling for school-aged children because students should not navigate high-speed environments, poor crossings, and a lack of complete streets to get to school. Safe Routes to School (SRTS) planning offers a national framework to address the missing infrastructure in these underserved communities. SRTS is part of the solution to increase physical activity and improve unsafe walking and bicycling conditions for students, simultaneously reducing the number of cars on the road. Walking and bicycling to and from school can contribute to developing lifelong health, social skills, and community-wide norms of incorporating physical activity into daily routines. Children's safety and commutes to school should be funded by the Department of Transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, local government, school districts, or even a school in historically underserved areas. This PR will examine the potential of using technology to aid SRTS planning. Specifically, robots with cameras can be used to collect existing sidewalk conditions data, and video maps, and perform route testing. Planners can program technology to go into any Transit Desert to assess pedestrian conditions, collect missing data, and identify safe routes efficiently, improving walkability on the neighborhood community level. This innovation can be used as a tool for cities to maintain street-level assessments of infrastructure, replace walking audits, and improve the collection, usability, and access of data. Within the current SRTS framework, all schools provide maps showing safe routes for students to walk and bike to and from school, and these can evolve into video maps for additional educational benefit. This PR will use a pilot project in the Georgian Acres neighborhood in Austin, Texas to test the Community Hub for Smart Mobility’s capacity to host SRTS programming and participatory mapping aimed to foster school-aged children's use of shared alternative transportation.Community and Regional Plannin