The Atlanta Regional Commission received a $3 million safe streets grant from the Department of Transportation to improve school road safety in the city of Brookhaven and Clayton and Spalding counties.
On Jan. 27, ARC announced the funds, which prioritize communities with more than 17 roadway deaths per 100,000 people annually. The money will go towards improving street safety and access around schools in the chosen areas.
Statewide, Georgia has seen an increase in crash deaths from 2012 to 2021 — according to a report from Atlanta personal injury firm John Foy & Associates, deaths rose from 18.11 per 100,000 licensed drivers to 23.45.
In Atlanta, the number is slightly lower at under 13 deaths per 100,000 drivers. But the three communities won out the grant because they are “geographically, linguistically and socioeconomically diverse.” Brookhaven is an urban and central city, while Clayton County is suburban and Spalding County is more rural.
All three locales will receive planning and demonstration grants. The funds will help the ARC in three steps across 2.5 years: developing a comprehensive safety action plan, supplemental safety planning, and “demonstration activities.”
Throughout the planning process, residents will be surveyed, and family and road safety audits will take place.
The first year will focus on planning, while the second year will address demonstration activities, temporary safety improvements, educational efforts and pilot programs to test out the planned approaches. For the three grant recipients, those efforts will include community and teen outreach, infrastructure pop-ups, roadway improvements and “school pool pilots” that match parents to let children carpool to school together.
Each locality will provide a 20 percent match. ARC Executive Director and CEO Anna Roach said the funds will further collaborative efforts to meet the safety goals from the organization’s 2022 Regional Safety strategy.
“The roadway is a shared space, and safety is a shared responsibility,” Roach said. “It is extremely important to improve safety around our schools, especially for vulnerable users like school children.”
It marks another sizable influx of funds for Metro Atlanta’s “safe streets” projects. In September 2024, the Buckhead Community Improvement District received a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to complete a $40 million pedestrian-friendly overhaul of Lenox Road overhaul. Statewide, about $43 million in grant funds were awarded in 2024, with some grants going to Metro Atlanta areas like Gwinnett County.
