Walking to School in Barnegat

Walking to School in Barnegat

I know this is going to sound like one of those “when I was kid we had to….” stories, but this “new” idea of encouraging children to walk to school has me smiling.

Growing up in Cape May, it was an unspoken reality that almost everyone walked to school. My childhood home was about 1 mile from Cape May Elementary School, so I started walking when I was 7 or 8 years old. The only kids that didn’t walk, if I remember correctly, where the children from the Coast Guard Base.

So this new imitative in Barnegat to build sidewalks for kids to walk to school has me a little amused and, I must admit, I little befuddled. Befuddled, because I’m not sure what took the city administrators, both past and present, so long to come up with the idea.

The construction has begun on nearly two miles of sidewalks that will connect some neighborhoods to schools — making it safer for students to walk and saving the school district thousands of dollars a year in transportation costs. Crews began pouring cement last week on a length of sidewalk along Bengal Boulevard leading to the Donahue Elementary School. More sidewalks will be constructed on from surrounding Barnegat neighborhoods and a new pathway will connect the Brackman Middle School and Cecil S. Collins Elementary School.

The sidewalks, which have long been discussed among activists as an alternative to expensive busing, will cost the township about $500,000 in bonded money. The cost of the sidewalks will run about $230,000.
Barnegat school superintendent said that the district's transportation budget will decrease by $675,000 as a result of adopting the Safe Routes to Schools program, staff cuts, administrative reductions and not purchasing new buses. "The sidewalk project should reduce our transportation budget annually by an estimated $150,000 to $200,000 per year, so, over a 10-year period, that is over a million dollars," he said.

My question remains; “Why did it take so long to figure this out?” Besides, when I was a kid, I had to walk to school, barefoot, in the snow, and uphill…both ways!

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Karl Hess, Barnegat
Your Agent on The Jersey Shore