Pasco County has started building 14.5 miles of new sidewalk around its schools, the first visible piece of a Safe Routes to School program that adds up to 14 separate projects and more than $22 million in work.

The opening phase is at Pineview Elementary and Pineview Middle in Land O' Lakes, where crews began work Aug. 19 on 2.6 miles of sidewalk at a cost of about $1.6 million. That job is scheduled to take roughly eight months. Commissioner Seth Weightman said of the location, "We are glad to be able to address what is considered the most dangerous site in the county."

The rest of the list reaches nearly every corner of Pasco. Sidewalks are planned around Crews Lake Middle and Mary Giella Elementary in the Shady Hills Road area, Wesley Chapel High, Wesley Chapel Elementary, Thomas E. Weightman Middle and Rushe Middle, the Pasco High, Middle and Elementary campuses and the Centennial schools in Dade City, Seven Springs Elementary, Bexley Elementary, Gulf Highlands Elementary, the Trinity schools including Trinity Oaks Elementary, the Hudson schools, Schrader Elementary and Bayonet Point Middle.

The money comes from a mix of local, state and federal sources, led by Penny for Pasco, the county's 1 percent infrastructure sales surtax. The surtax applies to the first $5,000 of a purchase and runs through December 2039.

The 14 projects are being built in phases over the next several years rather than all at once, so most of the sites on the list will wait their turn behind Pineview, the location the county singled out as the most dangerous of the group.