Newtown devotes a considerable amount of attention, care, and money to safety — in our homes, our workplaces, our schools, and on our roadways. These efforts have paid off; most people who call Newtown home associate the town with safety and security. If we feel vulnerable at all, it is on our roadways where serious accidents occur with alarming regularity. Congestion, distraction, and speed conspire put significant numbers of us at risk, despite our best efforts. Those risks are particularly worrisome when children are out and about moving to and from school in cars, buses, and on foot. So with school back in session and the exuberance of youthful pedestrians livening up the busy streets in the center of town, a little extra vigilance on the part of motorists is in order. But extra caution is not enough. We need to get schoolchildren off the sides of the roads. The planned network of sidewalks interconnecting Newtown’s schools needs to move forward as soon as possible.

The project, which is expected to unfold over a decade or more, depends on the town’s success in securing a $500,000 federal Safe Routes to School grant and to a lesser extent, local financial support. In addition to the obvious safety benefits of getting kids off the road shoulders and onto a sidewalk, the Safe Routes to School program hopes to encourage more students in kindergarten through grade eight to foster healthier lifestyles by walking or biking to school, according to federal transportation officials. The benefits, however, won’t be limited to kids.

The long-term plan for the sidewalk network is to connect all of Newtown’s schools, including the high school on Berkshire Road, in a pedestrian loop extending from the center of town along Queen Street, up Mile Hill Road to Reed School and Wasserman Way, to Berkshire Road and the high school, to Washington Avenue and Sandy Hook Center, up Church Hill Road to the existing network of sidewalks in the center of town. Other towns, like Southbury, Woodbury, and Middlebury, which have established “greenway” walking/bike path and sidewalk networks in their towns have found that they are well traveled — and not just by adolescents counting the days until they get their licenses. Walkers, with and without dogs, joggers, bicyclists, couples, and small groups of friends travel for miles on these sidewalks and paths nearly every pleasant day.

Sidewalks can knit a town together in ways that have nothing to do from getting from Point A to Point B. We look forward to the day when Newtown’s own network of sidewalks is completed and it becomes possible to stroll safely to Sandy Hook or to Fairfield Hills from the center of town. Yes we will be safer, but getting out and about on foot or on a bike should make us saner as well.