This report is more than just a summary of the work our program (and many, many partners!) accomplished in the 2024-25 school year to help students and their families walk, bike, and roll to and from their school and around their neighborhoods. It’s also a collection of dozens of inspiring stories that tell how people in Portland are making their streets safer, their communities healthier, and their lives more enjoyable.
Read the full "PBOT Safe Routes to School Program Summary 2024-25" report
This work is made possible with support from the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF), Metro, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).
About Safe Routes to School
The Safe Routes to School program at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is a partnership between the city, schools, neighborhoods, community organizations, and other government agencies. It helps students and their families walk, bike, and roll
to and from school and around their neighborhoods. Through education, engagement, and infrastructure improvements like crosswalks, speed bumps, and stop signs, Safe Routes to School helps make it easier, safer, healthier, and more fun for students and families to travel through their neighborhoods. Programs like this help decrease traffic congestion, reduce the impact of climate change, and encourage positive physical and mental wellbeing.
Safe Routes to School currently serves more than 100 high, middle, elementary, K-8, and K-12 schools across five Portland school districts—Portland Public, David Douglas, Parkrose, Centennial, and Reynolds.
The PBOT's Safe Routes to School team also works closely with PBOT's Vision Zero team. Vision Zero is Portland's goal to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries on our streets. Both programs use what's known as a Safe System approach to traffic safety. This
approach anticipates human mistakes through five layers of redundancy: safe speeds, safe streets, safe people, safe vehicles, and post-crash response. In short: create a transportation system with layers of safety, so when a mistake leads to a crash, the impact on the human body doesn't cause serious injury or death.
Vision statement
All students and families can choose to walk, bike, roll, or take transit as a safe, convenient, accessible, and desirable option for getting to and from school and around their neighborhoods.
Goals
The following program goals correlate to PBOT’s strategic goals for a more efficient and sustainable city:
- No child is involved in a serious traffic crash on their way to or from school
- Every child who wants to walk, bike, roll, or take transit to school knows how to do so safely
- The community understands how Safe Routes to School reduces congestion and the impacts of climate change
Learn more about our goals for Portland students in our Safe Routes to School Strategic Plan 2018-2023.
Guiding principles
Developed collaboratively with an advisory committee, these provide a roadmap for improving and expanding Safe Routes to School.
- Equitable: Our programming prioritizes underserved communities.
- Grounded in partnership: We collaborate and build strong relationships with schools, families, community organizations, and other agencies.
- Flexible and inclusive: Our programs respond to those served by them, meet the needs of a variety of schools and families, and provide activities to engage groups in different ways.
- Create culture change: Our programs inspire and empower families, students, and school personnel to be champions for safety and active youth.
Strategic priorities
These priorities help focus our work and target where we want to improve, especially the gaps in our programming. Look for more detail on these priorities in this report.
- Sustainability: Our program is structured so it has ongoing support within schools
- Infrastructure: Every school community is safer because of investments and improvements we make to infrastructure
- High-schoolers: Our program for older students is youth-oriented and youth-driven
- Districts: School districts actively lead and champion elements of the program
- Circulation: We're mitigating circulation issues through education, changing behavior, and improving infrastructure
- School culture: Programming responds to the unique culture within each school
- Skill development: Age-appropriate content ensures students learn skills for safe and active travel as they grow up
- Communications: Clear and consistent communications about programs and citywide resources
Reflections on the 2024-2025 school year
We're building stronger relationships with school districts
School districts championing our work is pivotal to our program's success. This past school year included two major accomplishments in this vein: Portland Public Schools adopted our transportation safety curriculum, and Centennial School District is now using our pedestrian safety curriculum. We continue to collaborate with new Safe Routes to School coordinators in both districts to strengthen our programs. Beyond that, we're accessing more grant funding with the help of letters of support from school districts. Finally, we're delivering infrastructure projects in more collaborative ways, thanks to the trust we've developed with school district staff. This trust increases our capacity to deliver important capital projects that make our communities safer.
More educators are teaching our curriculum
Our educator transportation safety training curriculum is becoming more popular. More teachers are ready to teach the material confidently and independently. We aim to keep expanding. This is foundational to building a safe transportation system.
We're engaging high school students in new ways
Since our program started working with high school students, we've continued to evolve and expand the ways we engage with older youth. High schoolers know how to communicate with their peers and grab their attention, so we used their expertise to adjust our Transportation Academy program. Similarly, a core part of our BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program is designed around the belief that high schoolers learn best from each other. We continue to find new ways to collaborate with all our program partners, especially youth.
Goals for 2025-2026
We're eager to build on our success in the 2025–26 school year while expanding our programming in a sustainable way. We'll do this by training educators in groups and delegating part of this work to school districts. We're revising our Transportation Academy curriculum and will focus on teaching high school students how to be multimodal.
We will involve students more in the project design phase of infrastructure improvements around their schools to help to empower them to shape their streets.
We will explore more funding opportunities for capital projects. We look forward to sharing our more user-friendly Infrastructure Plan map and coordinating across the city's Public Works bureaus to find ways to build upon existing projects.
We will empower school administrators to create their own circulation plans and support them in this process.
Finally, we will update our Strategic Plan and create an Action Plan.
Long-term investment needed for priorities
To make systemic change and deliver on the priorities outlined in our refined Strategic Plan, we must continue making long-term investments. We can do this by continuing to deliver the approximately 1,300 infrastructure projects in our Infrastructure Plan and by providing education to every Portland student.
Since 2017, PBOT's Safe Routes to School program spent $17 million to help complete more than 350 infrastructure projects. Major investment is still necessary for sidewalks and traffic signals to make crossings safer and ensure all students and families have better options to get to school regardless of where they live.
We used our creative teaching model in roughly 30% of Portland schools, meaning about 70% of schools and their students are missing out on critical transportation safety education. Ambitious investment is needed to support this work.
Strategic priorities - what's working
Strategic priority 1: Sustainability
Our program is structured so it has ongoing support within schools
The Safe Routes to School team does not have the capacity to engage with all 55,000+ students at Portland's 100+ schools across five districts. This is why we designed our program in a creative way to be more sustainable. Through a "trainthe- trainer" teaching model, we help educators become transportation safety experts for their school community. This helps expand our reach beyond what we would be able to do through direct education with students alone.
By the numbers
2024-25 school year
- 39: Number of schools that offered transportation safety education
- 28: Number of educators we trained
- 87%: Percent of schools teaching safety education through our train-the-trainer model
- +89%: Percent growth in schools using the train-the-trainer model since previous year
Program spotlight
Planting seeds of safety and meaningful connection
Coach Ed Rosario is a driven PE teacher at Woodmere Elementary creating opportunities for students to bike to school. While offering bike safety in PE, several students gained enough skills to become proficient in riding a two-wheeled bike for the first time. Coach Ed shared that one of the students who struggled the most learning to bike taught their dad how to ride. Now they ride together after school. "He used the same progressions he learned from the program. It was such a beautiful moment." Coach Ed knew he wanted to do more with the positive energy the curriculum was bringing to the school community. With PBOT staff support, he started a weekly bike bus on Wednesdays and walking school bus on Fridays. This also helped put to use some recently completed infrastructure improving access to neighborhood parks, schools, and other destinations. Coach Ed says that meaningful moments on the weekly walking school bus and bike bus help motivate students to be physically active long into the future.
Pedestrian safety education in more Centennial schools
In the winter, PE teacher Robert Bentley led pedestrian safety education for the first time at Centennial School District's Patrick Lynch Elementary. Robert found the unit valuable for his students, incorporating pedestrian safety lessons—such as walking
opposite to oncoming traffic—into his daily warmup. Robert continued incorporating the material as minilessons throughout the school year.
Strategic priority 2: Infrastructure
Every school community is safer because of investments and improvements we make to infrastructure
Infrastructure is an essential component of our work. Our program focuses on improvements where students are most likely to be walking, biking, and rolling to school. These are part of what's known as the Infrastructure Plan's priority network which weaves through neighborhoods across the city. The money for these improvements comes from several sources including grants, taxes, and other revenue. In 2024, Portland voters renewed the city's 10-cent gas tax for a third time. That program, known as Fixing Our Streets, will add $6 million, bringing the total investment in Safe Routes to School projects to $20 million since it was first adopted in 2016. Fixing Our Streets has helped to fund more than 350 completed projects with another 100 in development, design, or construction.
By the numbers
2024-25 school year
- 25 crossing projects (e.g., ADA-compliant curb ramps, marked and high visibility crosswalks, medians, flashing beacons, stop signs, traffic signals)
- 15 speed projects (e.g., speed bumps, reduced speed limits, speed reader boards)
- 10 walkway projects (e.g., sidewalks)
- $5.5 million in grant funds for three projects (not including matching funds)
Program spotlight
New sidewalks for students and families getting to school in Portsmouth
In the spring, we completed the N Willis Sidewalk Infill Project, an essential connection for César Chávez School students and families in the Portsmouth neighborhood. As part of this project, crews created a safer, continuous pedestrian route on the south side of N Willis Boulevard between Newman Avenue and Chautauqua Boulevard. This project was funded through Fixing Our Streets, the 10-cent local gas tax approved by voters in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
New, safer crossing informed by community needs
This spring, PBOT crews finished constructing safer crossings and infrastructure at SE 52nd Avenue at Center and Gladstone streets. These improvements near Creston K-5 School help people safely transition across the neighborhood greenway as it jogs from SE Gladstone to Center streets. Emily Essley, a Creston bike bus leader, shared how excited they were when they saw the paint go down during construction. "The work at 52nd and Gladstone looks fantastic!"
Making bike bus routes more visible
We're partnering with Portland Public School bike bus leaders to help make biking to school safer. Through a Metro Regional Travel Options grant, we're developing and installing wayfinding signage to make bike bus routes at nine elementary schools more visible. The Metro grant helps to educate, encourage, and reduce barriers to increase the use of travel options. In addition to wayfinding, community members told us more was needed to avoid unsafe interactions between people driving and the kids and adults on bike buses. We cocreated yellow, weatherproof signs with bike bus leaders to attach to their bikes. Each sign shares safety messages, in English and Spanish, that educate people how to safely share the street with bike buses.
Strategic priority 3: High-schoolers
Our program for older students is youth-oriented and youth-driven
Our Safe Routes to School team continues to develop a robust high school programming that is youth-driven and youth-oriented. This includes our Transportation Academy, one-off events, and youth training opportunities. This year, Safe Routes to School staff launched the BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program for high schoolers to learn about and promote biking while developing leadership skills.
By the numbers
2024-25 school year
- 100 students participated in the Transportation Academy
- 32 students applied for the BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program
- 5 students participated in the BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program
- 40 students attended BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program safety orientations
- $50,000 of grant funding supports BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program
Program spotlight
Students are helping make our curriculum more relevant and engaging
To make our Transportation Academy curriculum more relevant and engaging, we brought in the experts! Students in Cleveland High School's Transit to Trails Club and McDaniel High School's Cycling Club participated in focus groups to share feedback on the curriculum. Students shared that the module's Jeopardy! game made the lesson exciting. They also learned how PBOT changes speed limits and builds traffic safety infrastructure.
Safe Routes to School's Transportation Academy, partially funded through Metro's Regional Travel Options grant, is a unique program for high school students in Portland Public and Parkrose school districts. Students learn about transportation, traffic safety, climate, equity, and civic engagement in the classroom, as well as more outside the classroom such as practical ways to get around their neighborhoods and the city.
We launched a new program for high schoolers with BIKETOWN
This April, thanks to an Oregon Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School education grant, we launched the BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program. This is a new opportunity for Parkrose, Roosevelt, and McDaniel high school students to get paid to develop leadership skills, promote healthy lifestyles, and fulfill a graduation requirement while teaching their peers how to use Portland's BIKETOWN bike-share system. It runs through June 2026.
Participants held "orientation sessions" at their schools to discuss the environmental, physical, and financial benefits of choosing to walk, bike, or roll with their fellow students. They also taught their peers how to use BIKETOWN bikes and sign up for BIKETOWN for All, a program that provides Portland residents who live on low-incomes with a reduced-cost membership.
Strategic priority 4: School districts
School districts actively lead and champion elements of the program
PBOT's Safe Routes to School program serves a wide population. We're actively engaged and adapt our program to five Portland school districts, closely coordinating with county and nonprofit partners.
By the numbers
2024-25 school year
- 55,000+ students
- 100+ schools* across 5 school districts
- 13 high schools
- 20 middles schools
- 64 elementary schools
- 10 K-8 schools
- 1 K-12 school
- 81 in Portland Public Schools
- 14 in David Douglas School District
- 6 in Parkrose School District
- 4 in Centennial School District
- 3 in Reynolds School District
* Not including alternative schools, charter schools, or schools outside our five main school districts
Program spotlight
School districts officially endorse our curriculum
We know our transportation safety curriculum is essential, and it takes true partnership to get it in classrooms. To make that happen, our staff presented to leadership at Portland's largest school district, Portland Public Schools (PPS), about the value of our educational resources and how they could fit with their existing curriculum. The outcome? The district adopted all four of our safety curricula—pedestrian, bike, and transportation safety education and the Transportation Academy—as "supplemental curriculum." Starting summer 2025, PPS will promote these units, and we will train interested teachers.
Collaborating with Centennial School District's first Safe Routes to School coordinator
We've been supporting Centennial School District since 2007. For six years, this collaboration has grown, as part of the East Multnomah County Safe Routes to School partnership, a joint effort between PBOT, Multnomah County, the City of Gresham, and bike works by p:ear that provides consistent programming to all schools in the Centennial and Reynolds districts.
Over the years, we've worked with Centennial to incorporate more Safe Routes to School education in their classrooms. We supported their grant application to bring on their first-ever Safe Routes to School coordinator, Ian Rees, who started this year. We look forward to collaborating with Ian on nearly every aspect of our work including circulation, grants, training, and education. Slowly but surely, Portland continues to prioritize transportation safety education, and this is a shining example of a Portland school district lifting up Safe Routes to School programming.
Strategic priority 5: Circulation
We're mitigating circulation issues through education, changing behavior, and improving infrastructure
The Safe Routes to School team acts as a bridge between PBOT and schools on student safety concerns and congestion issues. We prioritize Title I schools and focus our attention on arrival and dismissal times around campuses. Once a school reports an issue and requests a visit, our staff along with PBOT engineers analyze the issues to determine if the problem is behavioral, structural, or both. We then work with school leadership to mitigate these issues with a mix of education and infrastructure improvements.
By the numbers
2024-25 school year
- 13 school visits to analyze circulation and student safety
- 13 circulation maps created
- 13 communication template distributed
Program spotlight
Partnering with schools to make travel safer
The Safe Routes team worked to address circulation issues at 13 schools this year, mostly elementary and middle schools. We provided circulation maps, messaging for their school community, as well as flyers about walking and riding safely we translated into multiple languages. We made small infrastructure improvements at a number of these schools. We also changed signs for loading and bus zones at many of them. Finally, we followed up with them about their experience and whether these changes are making a difference for their students and school community.
Efficient arrival and dismissal
Our team brought a traffic engineer and a parking engineer to Woodlawn Elementary School to observe traffic circulation during arrival. Principal Andrea Porter-Lopez shared concerns about drivers using loading/unloading zones incorrectly, parking curbside on the wrong side of the street, dropping off students in the middle of the street, and letting students exit vehicles on the street side of the car, rather than the curb side. These behaviors created unsafe conditions for students getting to the school entrance.
We observed all these scenarios during our visit and created a circulation plan with a counter-clockwise traffic flow to mitigate congestion and correct driver behavior. Additionally, we changed or added parking signs and installed marked crossings near the front of the school and surrounding intersections. With this help, and promotion of their new circulation plan, the school hopes to make their frontage safer and more efficient during arrival and dismissal.
Strategic priority 6: School culture
Programming responds to the unique culture within each school
We know a one-size-fits-all approach does not allow for the unique challenges each school community faces. We follow the school's lead and tailor our program to them. When PBOT completed a sidewalk and multiuse path, we worked with the nearby elementary school to celebrate it through International Walk + Roll to School Day and their Hispanic Heritage Night. In another school, we taught pedestrian safety skills to middle school students and chaperoned a walking school bus for a neighboring elementary school. In Life Skills classes where students receive significant communication, social, and behavioral support, we've provided adaptive bikes for students who couldn't comfortably use standard bikes. And we've
provided bilingual instruction in bike safety classes so students who spoke Spanish as their primary language could fully participate.
We're committed to creating safe streets for all students and families in Portland. This goes beyond traditional traffic safety investments and includes supporting personal safety and a sense of belonging.
We need streets where people feel safe getting where they need to go free from threat and fear of emotional, psychological, and physical harm.
Program spotlight
Offering bilingual bike safety education where students need it the most
Before the first day of school, our staff led a bike safety class for 16 incoming sixth graders at David Douglas School District's Ron Russell and Alice Ott middle schools. We provided bilingual instruction since about half of the students were English language learners who spoke Spanish as their primary language. The four sessions culminated in a community ride. This was part of summer programming from Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Community School and just one example of ways we're making sure our curriculum is accessible and inclusive to more students.
Making biking accessible to students in Parkrose
In May, PE teachers and Safe Routes to School staff led bike safety education at Parkrose Middle School. Participants included students from the Life Skills class, who have developmental and intellectual disabilities. Some of these students rode standard two-wheeled bikes, while adaptive bikes were a better fit for others. To ensure all students were included in bike education, our team rented three adaptive bikes from Adaptive BIKETOWN and borrowed two more from Cycle Oregon. We're thankful to these partners for helping us get kids the bikes they needed. Students found joy and a sense of self-efficacy in riding them. On day two of bike education, a trio of the Life Skills students arrived at the gym chanting "Bikes! Bikes! Bikes!"
Strategic priority 7: Skill development
Age-appropriate content ensures students learn skills for safe and active travel as they grow up
Through different types of education, we’re meeting youth where they’re at in their skill development. Age-appropriate material for elementary, middle, and high school students ensures students keep growing skills for safe and active travel.
Family-friendly events citywide
We supported age-appropriate walk, bike, and roll events across the city, including:
- International Walk + Roll to School Day (Oct. 9, 2024)
42 schools participated - Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day (Nov. 14, 2024)
35 schools participated - Winter Walk + Roll to School Day (Feb. 5, 2025)
40 schools participated - Walk + Roll May Challenge (May 2025)
39 schools participated - National Bike + Roll to School Day (May 7, 2025)
38 schools participated
By the numbers
2024-25 school year
- 39 schools participated in classroom transportation safety education
- 3 high schools
- 7 middle schools
- 29 elements schools
- 12,920 students took part in transportation safety education of some kind
- 8,740 students in pedestrian safety
- 3,370 students in bike safety
- 700 students in transportation safety
- 110 students in the Transportation Academy
- 180 bikes in our fleet
- 11+ walk, bike, and roll events across the city
Program spotlight
Supporting Division-Midway Alliance youth transportation experts
Division-Midway Alliance is a place-based nonprofit creating social resiliency and economic prosperity for residents and businesses in Southeast Portland. In partnership with Vision Zero, we supported Division-Midway Alliance's program, helping 10 youth from different language backgrounds become transportation experts so they could then teach members of their communities in their primary languages. Safe Routes to School led a workshop on bike safety and route planning that included a community ride, a transit workshop, and a transit field trip.
Educators spread transportation safety to more schools
Our vision of educators teaching transportation safety in their classrooms continues to inspire. Toney Frisina, "Coach Freeze," a wellness teacher at Kellogg Middle School, taught our full transportation safety unit every quarter. All students go through his class and, according to other teachers and parents, it sparked a lot of great conversation and changed behavior at Kellogg. Students thought more about getting around independently (without parents driving them) and considered more active forms of transportation. The personal safety unit of the curriculum even helped them seek a teacher's help and avoid a stranger offering candy on campus. Coach Freeze plans to teach the course again next year. He spoke at a district-wide training this summer to promote the program to other teachers, and he's fundraising with students to purchase a bike fleet for Kellogg they'll share with other schools in the Franklin High cluster.
Strategic priority 8: Communications
Clear and consistent communications about programs and citywide resources
We're making sure people in our community know about Safe Routes to School. In addition to handling correspondence by phone and email, staff create engaging and accessible content about our work, sharing resources and programming with our larger network. We have a monthly newsletter and a growing social media presence. We also work with PBOT's Communications team to send news releases.
By the numbers
2024-25 school year
- 13 monthly newsletters to 7,673 subscribers
- 29% of emails are opened
- 8% of people click links in emails
- 25,178 webpage views from 19,256 users
- 5 news releases
- 154 emails from community members addressing their concerns about
- 34% infrastructure projects
- 17% program resources
- 10% school circulation
- 10% speeding
- 7% campsites
- 6% education requests
- 4% general information
- 3% general safety concerns
- 2% parking
- 1% appreciation
- 13% other topics
- Instagram
- 49,361 reach*
- 2,908 profile visits
- 2,198 content interactions
- 544 new followers
- 2,564 total followers
- Facebook
- 9,360 reach
- 1,004 profile visits
- 315 content interactions
- 42 new follows
- 1,376 total followers
- Top performing posts
- Oct. 29, 2024 Instagram carousel celebrating bike buses
- 25,496 views
- 15,926 reach
- 663 interactions
- March 31, 2025 Instagram post promoting a PBOT bike ride
- 7,054 views
- 5,319 reach
- 229 interactions
- July 19, 2024 Instagram reel about neighborhood greenways
- 6,231 views
- 4,365 reach
- 244 interactions
- Feb. 12, 2025 Instagram reel promoting BIKETOWN Youth Ambassador program
- 5,184 views
- 3,510 reach
- 181 interactions
- Aug. 15, 2024 Instagram carousel about a sidewalk improvement project
- 3,713 views
- 3,108 reach
- 121 interactions
- Oct. 29, 2024 Instagram carousel celebrating bike buses
* Number of unique people who see content
Program spotlight
We're leading social media engagement among Safe Routes to School programs
By our estimates, our Instagram account (@saferoutespdx) is the most prominent Safe Routes to School account in the world with 2,564 followers, more than four times the next biggest account with 601 followers. We're reaching a wider audience by collaborating with larger accounts including Coach Balto (187,000 followers), the City of Portland (14,300 followers), and our own bureau PBOT (12,100 followers).
Using our newsletter to highlight community leaders
In addition to timely information and resources, we use our monthly newsletter to let our 7,600+ subscribers know about the work that everyday folks in Portland do to make our community better. Each newsletter highlights a community member and leader. We tell the story of how they started helping kids and their families walk, bike, and roll to and from school, the lessons they learned, their challenges, and what keeps them motivated.
