Every week, about four children in Philadelphia are hit by drivers on their way to and from school. The City’s initiative, Safe Routes Philly, aims to reduce traffic deaths to zero by 2030.

Luca Johnson, the Serve Philadelphia VISTA member assigned to the Safe Routes Philly project, hit the ground running at the start of his service term. As part of Vision Zero, Safe Routes Philly partners with communities and schools to create safe, healthy environments for students to walk and bike to school.

To meet this goal, Safe Routes Philly supports school staff and volunteers to implement innovative traffic safety strategies. These strategies include walking and biking “school buses,” in which kids and adults travel to school together.

Luca has represented Safe Routes at walking and biking “school buses,” school streets, and other outreach opportunities. The school streets pilot closes street traffic in front of schools to encourage and expand space for safe walking, biking, and playing during pick-up and drop-off times.

Luca’s service builds upon the efforts of previous VISTA members to expand the reach of Safe Routes Philly by increasing the number of schools that host the traffic education program. Luca connected with over 60 schools through a variety of strategies, but most successfully, by getting out into the city to visit schools and build relationships with staff and volunteers.

Cultivating and stewarding strong relationships helped Luca find success not only in expanding Safe Routes’ reach but also in strengthening existing school partnerships. Luca said, “I help at food distributions to meet community leaders and to become a familiar face. This helped me get introductions to people who wanted to spread the word about this program and make it happen.”

When springtime came, Safe Routes kicked off the traffic safety curriculum pilot. Luca took the lead to develop and pilot traffic safety presentations for 100 second and third graders at two schools. “This was the first time that Safe Routes Philly has done educational programming in schools. The kids were engaged, the staff was excited – it’s a major success!”, VISTA supervisor Pete DeCarolis said.

When asked what he wants residents to know about Safe Routes, Luca told us, “Safe Routes Philly wants to make it as easy as possible to grow your traffic safety toolkit by providing the tools to succeed.”