Barnstable Receives Grant Funding for Bike, Pedestrian Safety

BARNSTABLE – More than $7,000 will heading to Barnstable for improved pedestrian and bicycle safety efforts.

The fiscal year 2019 Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Enforcement and Equipment Grant is made available through The Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

The agency announced roughly 700,000 in federal funding for more than 90 Bay State communities. The grants aim to improve safety via overtime enforcement of traffic laws applicable to pedestrians and bicyclists, educational materials, and safety items for public distribution.

“It will allow us to conduct some education around the Sturgis School on Main Street relative to safe crossing of the road and things like that,” explained Barnstable’s Chief of Police Matthew Sonnabend.

“It will also allow us to purchase some bicycle helmets for the school resource officers to distribute throughout the town of Barnstable to school children who can’t afford any of those.”

According to state public safety officials, close to 6,000 pedestrians were killed in 2016 across the country, pedestrians now account for a larger portion of traffic fatalities than they have in the past 33 years.

In Massachusetts, that rate is even higher, with pedestrians representing more than 20 percent of all traffic fatalities. Bicyclists are dying at higher rates nationally as well. The 840 killed in crashes in 2016 are the most since 1991.