The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Safe Routes to School Program is unique in that Activate Chattanooga serves as a review committee for decision making and a body for responsibility of specific program components such as the Federal Highway Administration's comprehensive requirement of the "Five E's".  The members of Activate Chattanooga represent various departments and agencies of the local governments in Hamilton County.  Therefore each representative already provides a specific service to the community and that service, if applicable, is worked into Safe Routes to School. 

For example, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department provides health services and safety programming for the community through publications, surveys, research etc.  One of the Health Department's responsibilities for Safe Routes to School was to tailor a survey behavior and safety survey for the participating schools as part of the required evaluation component.  This worked well because the department is already doing that type of work in the community thus there is no duplication of service being requested by another source. Actually, the program helps to improve the existing service by reaching a specific audience resulting in more specific data.

Click on any of the five components to view all agencies and departments assisting in the responsibilities under that component.  The definitions below were pulled from the Federal Highway Administration's Guidance on Safe Routes to School (http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/saferoutes ).

Encouragement:  Using events and activities to promote walking and bicycling.

Education:  Teaching children about the broad range of transportation choices, instructing them in important lifelong bicycling and walking safety skills, and launching driver safety campaigns in the vicinity of schools.

Engineering:  Creating operational and physical improvements to the infrastructure surrounding schools that reduce speeds and potential conflicts with motor vehicle traffic, and establish safer and fully accessible crossings, walkways, trails and bikeways.

Enforcement:  Partnering with local law enforcement to ensure traffic laws are obeyed in the vicinity of schools (this includes enforcement of speeds, yielding to pedestrians in crossings , and proper walking and bicycling behaviors), and initiating community enforcement such as crossing guard programs.

Evaluation:  Monitoring and documenting outcomes and trends through the collection of data, including the collection of data before and after the intervention(s).