Dec. 19, 2023

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Salt Lake City has been awarded $953,600 from the U.S. Department of Transportation through Safe Streets and Roads for All to pilot an interactive safety education program in schools.

The TravelWell Schools program will be delivered to K-12 classrooms in Salt Lake City. The community will learn about safe streets and Vision Zero through technology, with digital mapping to identify real-time travel behaviors, problems, and solutions. It allows them to measure the effects of their individual and families’ transportation choices and empowers students’ decisions on how they move about our community.

“Every street should be the safest street in Salt Lake City, period. That’s especially true for roads near our schools,” Mayor Erin Mendenhall said. “This grant funding will advance our Vision Zero goals and make Salt Lake City’s streets a safer place for kids because no death is acceptable. We won’t stop looking for ways to address street safety for all Salt Lakers.”

The City will partner with the Salt Lake City School District and the nonprofit, Children’s Media Workshop, to target education and outreach to underserved populations. Findings from the pilot will be used to inform a Safe Streets for All action plan, which is currently being developed in partnership with the Wasatch Front Regional Council. Feedback from the program will also be used to inform school safety planning and the Vision Zero program.

“The exciting thing about this grant and partnership is that it provides an opportunity for us to crowdsource feedback directly from students, enabling us to make targeted safety investments where that will provide the highest benefit for them,” said Jon Larsen, the Transportation Division Director for Salt Lake City.

Early testing outcomes in a pilot of the TravelWell Schools program demonstrated a significant increase in behavioral changes toward active transportation–as much as two to three times. In January 2022, Mayor Mendenhall issued a proclamation announcing the City’s intention to become a Vision Zero city with the goal of eliminating serious injuries and fatalities on City streets by 2035.

In total, communities in Utah received $2,323,925 in funding from Safe Streets and Roads for All, established in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

Read more about Salt Lake City’s ambitious Vision Zero goals here.