Conducting a Walking and Biking Audit is a crucial part of the planning process, as it allows you to get out into the community to walk, bike, and roll actual student routes and assess their safety.
The goals of these audits are:
- To identify safety hazards along routes
- To increase community awareness and support for SRTS by providing first-hand experience of safety problems
- To begin to identify possible solutions to existing safety concerns
- To complete the Safe Routes to School planning process
Your core SRTS team should participate, as well as additional members from your task force team. It’s also a great time for you to invite the media, community leaders, and representatives of stakeholder groups to participate, as having them walk, bike, or roll with you can be a powerful way to show first-hand why SRTS programs are needed and to try to engage a range of community members and stakeholders in the planning process.
So how does a walking and biking audit logistically work? In general, an audit should include a few things:
- A list of student addresses will have to be compiled to inform audit maps and key routes. Your SRTS Coordinator can generate the student map for you.
- Promotion of the audit event should be sent out with invitation to parents, guardians and other community members.
- Audits should be scheduled with your SRTS Coordinator, who can help you lead or provide you with the materials to lead and facilitate audits on your own.
- Audits take about two hours and can happen during or after school hours.
Here are a handful of documents that could be used to help promote an audit and train participants:
You can check out our SRTS Handbook: Auditing Routes for more details.