BILL REQ. #:  S-0602.1 

Read first time 02/01/13.   Referred to Committee on Transportation.

     AN ACT Relating to committing state and federal support to the safe routes to school program; amending RCW 47.04.300; reenacting and amending RCW 46.68.060; and creating a new section.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 1   The legislature recognizes that our state's safe routes to school program provides critical resources to state and local agencies for projects that enhance the safety and health of our children as they travel to and from school each day. The legislature further recognizes that since the program's inception in 2005, it has reached one hundred seventy-seven schools, making walking and biking conditions safer for seventy-seven thousand children. The safe routes to school program also helps to combat the childhood obesity epidemic and ultimately lower health care costs by making healthy options to walk and bike to school safer and easier. As such, it is the intent of the legislature to ensure the continuation of this important safety and health program by codifying federal funding at the level provided in the 2011-2013 fiscal biennium and state funding commitments made as part of the 2012 transportation fee increases.

Sec. 2   RCW 47.04.300 and 2009 c 392 s 1 are each amended to read as follows:
     (1) Concurrent with the federal safe, accountable, flexible, efficient transportation equity act of 2005, a safe routes to school program is established within the department. The purpose of the program is to:
     (((1))) (a) Enable and encourage children, including those with disabilities, to walk and bicycle to school;
     (((2))) (b) Make bicycling and walking to school a safer and more appealing transportation alternative, encouraging a healthy and active lifestyle from an early age; and
     (((3))) (c) Facilitate the planning, development, and implementation of projects and activities that will improve safety and reduce traffic, fuel consumption, and air pollution in the vicinity of schools.
     (2) Consistent with federal funding levels from the 2011-2013 omnibus transportation appropriations act, at least ten million four hundred thousand dollars of federal transportation funds, of which fifty percent must come from the transportation alternatives program or an equivalent program and fifty percent from the highway safety improvement program or an equivalent program, must be made available during each fiscal biennium to the safe routes to school program.

Sec. 3   RCW 46.68.060 and 2011 c 367 s 718 and 2011 c 298 s 26 are each reenacted and amended to read as follows:
     There is hereby created in the state treasury a fund to be known as the highway safety fund to the credit of which must be deposited all moneys directed by law to be deposited therein. This fund must be used for carrying out the provisions of law relating to driver licensing, driver improvement, financial responsibility, cost of furnishing abstracts of driving records and maintaining such case records, and to carry out the purposes set forth in RCW 43.59.010, and chapters 46.72 and 46.72A RCW. ((During the 2009-2011 and 2011-2013 fiscal biennia, the legislature may transfer from the highway safety fund to the motor vehicle fund and the multimodal transportation account such amounts as reflect the excess fund balance of the highway safety fund.)) Beginning with the 2013-2015 fiscal biennium, during each fiscal biennium thereafter, and consistent with the intent of the fee increases in chapter 74, Laws of 2012 and chapter 80, Laws of 2012, at least six million eight hundred thousand dollars from the highway safety fund must be dedicated to the safe routes to school program under RCW 47.04.300.