With fall in the air and back-to-school commercials in full swing, here at Blueprint America we were reminded by our colleagues at Rocky Mountain PBS in Colorado about the potential of a kids program picking up pace across the country: “Safe Routes to School.”

You can “Take the ‘A’ train” in New York City, but in Denver, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Des Moines and a handful of other communities, you can hop on the ‘B’… for bicycle.

The city of Denver was first settled not by the lone frontiersman, but by a community that came together. Mayor John Hickenlooper, a candidate to succeed former Colorado Governor and current U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, had the same in mind when he expanded the metro region's light rail and mass transit system after he became mayor in 2003.

An update to the Blueprint Colorado project: A series of short videos produced by Rocky Mountain PBS on Denver's Living Streets initiative.

Then, Colorado State of Mind on Rocky Mountain PBS talks with Colorado's state planners to see how the state is managing its infrastructure.

A roundup of links to local stories of national importance to the state of America's infrastructure.

Blueprint America: Public Works is an effort by 18 public television stations across the country that concentrates on the state of their local infrastructure. Communities -- big and small, urban and rural -- are, for the first time, collectively rethinking what it takes to make a place livable. PBS stations are producing radio and television segments, hosting discussions between policy makers and their communities, and offering further content online, all as a part of Blueprint America.

Blueprint America: Road to the Future goes to three very different American cities -- Denver, New York and Portland, and their surrounding suburbs -- to look at each as an example of the challenges and possibilities the country faces as citizens struggle to manage a growing America.

As Denver's growth rate has consistently outpaced the national rate every decade since the 1930s, its people have spread out across the region similar to Phoenix, Arizona, or Houston, Texas. Still, its mass transit system is expanding and, as a result, growth may be better managed in the future.