Spinning the wheel for prizes at Southport Elementary. Photo by West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon

WALKSacramento’s Bike to School Day events on May 8 were a resounding success! Nearly 500 students rode their bikes to 12 schools in West Sacramento and South Natomas. As a national event, Bike to School Day capitalizes on the excitement surrounding National Bike Month to raise awareness of the need for Safe Routes to School. WALKSacramento encourages our Safe Routes to School project schools to participate in Bike to School Day to generate interest in year round walk and bike programs.

This year was the first year WALKSacramento has participated in Bike to School Day, but it definitely will not be the last. The day wasn’t a success just because more students biked to school. It was a success because more students want to ride to school again after May 8 and because the eyes of parents were opened to how positive riding to school can be. Over and over we heard students tell us that they wanted to ride before but this was the first time parents let them. Parents rode with their kids, dropped them off at meet-up locations to ride with other adults, or followed in their cars. It can be scary doing a new thing, but when everyone arrived at school safe and smiling the fear was gone and replaced by a desire to bike more often.

WALKSacramento helps parent volunteers and school staffs at each school organize Bike to School Day activities by assisting with recruiting volunteers, identifying meet-up locations and biking routes, promoting participation, leading ride groups, and handing out prizes for participating. As with any SRTS program, Bike to School Day depends on strong school-level support.  We provide resources to schools, but events would not be successful without the dedication of parent volunteers and school staffs being there to do everything from sending home fliers to high-fiving kids as they arrive at school. We are also grateful to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments for providing the May is Bike Month swag for participating students.

National Bike to School Day has passed, but the Safe Routes to School excitement will continue. West Sacramento schools are tracking student participation in walk and bike programs throughout May. Stonegate Elementary is even logging miles in the schools challenge on mayisbikemonth.com, and they’re coming for you, Davis schools! We also have some good work coming up this summer with Sacramento City Unified School District, so stay tuned for updates on that!

Valley Hi Park Renovation

By Chris Holm

Valley Hi Park, located in South Sacramento at Center Parkway and Arroyo Vista Drive, got a much needed renovation last Saturday, April 27. Three parks in the area – Valley Hi Park, Mesa Grande Park and Hite Park – were the parks chosen for the 4th Annual Mormon Helping Hands Community Day of Service in Sacramento. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had chosen the area for their Helping Hands project this year and the community stepped up to join in and make the project even more successful. Over one thousand volunteers spent the morning working on various projects at the parks, followed by a BBQ lunch for everyone.

Given my interest in walking, I volunteered to work on edging and weeding along the sidewalks and gutters. My wife and two teenage sons also joined me, but the irrigation sprinklers team needed help, so they went to dig in the dirt and mud.

It was great to see all the cleanup and improvements at Valley Hi Park. Over thirty projects were completed, such as installing benches, par-course exercise equipment, and barbeque grills, renovating the baseball field, soccer fields, and volleyball court, and replacing the play-structures play surfaces.

WALKSacramento began working in the Valley Hi community when we led a walk audit of Valley Hi Park as part of our work with the Health Education Council, which has been working to increase physical activity at Valley Hi Park and improve the health of the Valley Hi community. Their work, and ours, in Valley Hi is funded by the South Sacramento HEAL Zone, the local project in the Healthy Eating Active Living initiative of Kaiser Permanente.

During the walk audit, residents of the community and parents and staff from Leimbach Elementary School helped us to identify walkability issues at Valley Hi Park, but even more attention was brought to the park environment because of the gunfire that occurred in the park while we were there. Since then, with the efforts of community members, social and religious organizations, the police department, and the HEAL Zone project, there’s been a lot more happening at the park. Now, with the park renovation, we expect the community to be using their parks even more. This summer there will be a celebration of the renovated park, and we’ll post information as the day of the event gets closer.

Our streets, if we used them for more walking and biking, could provide the setting for America’s reconnection with health and vitality.  That’s the dream of Design 4 Active Sacramento, a team from the public, private and nonprofit sectors that is intent on re-connecting Sacramento with an active lifestyle that is tied into the transportation system.

The Design 4 Active Sacramento (D4AS) team includes:

• Judy Robinson (Team Leader), Principal Planner, County of Sacramento
• Olivia Kasiyre, MD, Sacramento County Public Health Officer
• Adrian Engel, Project Manager, Mark Thomas and Company
• Monica Hernanez, Project Manager, Sacramento Area Council of Governments
• Teri Duarte, MPH, Executive Director, WALKSacramento
• Edie Zusman, MD, FACS, FAANS, MBA, Director, Neuroscience Program Development, Eden Medical Center

D4AS was chosen this year as one of 20 teams nationwide by the US Centers for Disease Control to participate in the National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health.  NLAPH is a 12-month training program designed to improve health outcomes in communities by guiding local leaders to influence the policies and systems that impact community health.

By focusing on the transportation system as a way to enable people to be physically active, our leaders get results that are far beyond just seeing fewer people who are overweight or who have expensive health conditions.  When people travel on foot or bicycle, they often have chance encounters with friends and neighbors that can lead to stronger social connections, reducing rates of depression, crime and violence.  As more people replace short car trips with walking or biking to get to their destinations, polluting vehicle emissions decline, resulting in cleaner air.  The less people drive, the fewer traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths occur.

The current policy work underway by the D4AS team is to develop “Active Design Guidelines” for Folsom Boulevard from Watt Avenue to Hazel Avenue.  This is part of a larger project to bring more transit-supportive development, better transit connections, and more options for housing, jobs and shopping to this corridor.   This Folsom Blvd. corridor links unincorporated Sacramento County area with the City of Sacramento, City of Rancho Cordova, and City of Folsom.  These guidelines are intended to lead planners, designers, architects, engineers and developers to design neighborhoods, streets and buildings that lead people to walk instead of drive, to choose active for recreation instead of computer games, and to use stairs instead of elevators, as examples.  All of these will also reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Future policy for D4AS is to review the County’s commercial, single-family and multi-family residential design guidelines.   They will note content in each of these guidelines that support the public’s health and propose additional language that can embolden or expand on the health benefits.

The D4AS team has plans to continue its work even after the one-year leadership program ends.  WALKSacramento may become the hub for a future coalition that takes these efforts to the next level, with more widespread engagement of local decision makers and greater influence over how our community develops in the next decade.

For more information about the D4AS team or its plans to enhance our community for walking, biking, and other healthy activities, contact Judy Robinson, Principal Planner, County of Sacramento at robinsonju@saccounty.net or Teri Duarte, Executive Director, WALKSacramento at tduarte@walksacramento.org.

Keep walking!