Walk to school day

Today Wednesday is something called International Walk to School Day, which is, i guess, designed to get people thinking about things like childhood obesity, car culture, overprotective parents, and i don't know what all*. Can't find any mention of it on the DPS website, though, and not much on the Durham NC.gov site either, outside of a 2 year old press release.

I suppose that's a good thing, actually. Probably better to ignore the issue completely than to make a one-day wonder of it. (DurhamNC.gov does have a link to why you should vote for a $20 million bond for repaving our surface streets, though.)

I'll be walking to school with a neighborhood family later this morning, along the same route that i tried to have my kids walk 17 years ago when i first moved to Durham. We'll see what's changed in that time to make that walk safe.

UPDATE: Three DPS schools have registered events with the Walk To School website: Club, Watts, and Morehead. Curiously, all three are magnets, which means that the bulk of their population lives outside what is normally considered a walk zone, half a mile.

Here's what Club Blvd. officials have to say:

Since we are a magnet school and located next to a large park, we are having the buses drop students off (and requesting car drivers to do the same) on the other side of the park so they can get almost a 1/2 mile walk in on this day. We will have city officials and mascots to greet students as well as fresh fruit and water. This is the start of many events and changes in the school to encourage more biking and walking.

For starters, they could be pushing the city to put sidewalks on both sides of Washington Street, and use the sidewalks to reduce the 25 feet per lane width of that road, stripe some bike lanes, and urge the police to enforce the speed limit and observe the pedestrian right of way in crosswalk laws of the state.

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*Do i get bonus points for the stealth Andy Griffith reference?