A SAFER ROUTE
Project a step toward more walkable city, officials say
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Children can now walk and bike to Geyser Road Elementary School safely with the completion of the first Safe Routes to School project Thursday, officials said.
“It’s part of our whole vision and effort to be a more walkable, bikeable city,” said Mayor Joanne Yepsen. “We hope that this Safe Routes to School project that Geyser Road school so graciously offered to be the first in our city [to participate in] becomes a model for all the other schools in
our city, because we want to encourage students to be able to bike and walk safely to school every single day no matter what the weather is.”
The project was 100 percent funded through a grant from New York State Safe Routes to School as part of the Beaver Pond private development plan.
“We’re just going to see kids walking and biking and it’s going to be more of an athletically-oriented, healthy environment for all of our students and families,” said Geyser Road Elementary School Principal Kristy Moore. “I’m really excited about this.”
The route features a special crosswalk and a new light.
County Supervisor Peter Martin explained the importance of the Safe Routes to School project.
“This is hopefully the first of many schools with Safe Routes to school where, first, it’ll start with our children being incentivized and being enabled to walk and bike safely to school,” said Martin. “It’s so important to public health and it’s so important that we start it at a young age because then, once people are used to that at a young age, they’re going to demand to continue to have access to bike and to walk safely throughout our city.”
City principal planner Kate Maynard has worked on the Safe Routes to School project for sometime now. She explained the various partners that made this possible.
“We hear about partnerships all of the time in our world. This has been a true partnership example starting from the original inception of the idea, looking to put walkability, bikeability back to a neighborhood who has clamored for it for a decade-plus, working with the neighborhood association, the school district ... then, in moving forward, the county,” said Maynard. “It’s a county road. They worked very well with us ensuring that this gets done. We looked at the overall Geyser Road trail project, which we all have been working hard on, and in looking at the partnerships there from both the city perspective, the county, state parks, county IDA, the list goes on and on.”
The city will go to bid and start construction on the Geyser Road trail by next spring. Earlier this month, the City Council unanimously voted to use eminent domain on three properties in order build the trail.
The trail is a multi-use path that begins at the city line with the town of Milton continuing along the north side of Geyser Road to the intersection at Route 50.
The trail costs $3.3 million, and it’s fully funded state and federal grants.
Molly Gagne, president of the Southwest Neighborhood Association, spoke for the residents of the community.
“No one would ever imagine that a cement truck and diggers could make a neighborhood so excited,” said Gagne.
“Everybody I’ve talked to it’s like they have gone back to their childhood except now they know what it really means to have this completed and when we get our digging on this side of the road [for the Geyser Road trail] we will all be doing a happy dance.”