Two new middle school biking programs will soon be up and wheeling, thanks to a $212,000 grant the Cascade Bicycle Club has awarded Auburn Parks, Arts and Recreation.

On Monday evening (Oct. 7), the Auburn City Council accepted the grant.

Cascade Bicycle Club and the city’s Parks, Arts and Recreation Department will work with local bike advocates, educators and local communities to expand the knowledge of bicycle and pedestrian safety. They will also teach leadership skills to students in systemically underserved communities to improve the health and wellness of kids and create a cleaner, greener, and more equitable state.

“I am excited to see this type of grant funding come into Auburn,” said Councilmember Kate Baldwin. “Our parks and recreation department is doing a wonderful job with their Rec and Roll program, getting people onto two wheels and out into their neighborhoods. I’m just really happy to see this come in.”

Cascade is the grant authority for the program, and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is providing the funds.

“The whole point of the funds from WSDOT is to provide education for alternative modes of transportation, especially with children and underserved communities to reduce transportation as a barrier for work, for life, those type of things,” said Kevin Witte, recreation manager for Auburn Parks, Arts and Recreation.

Cascade Bicycle Club is a well-established bicycling group in the greater Seattle region that focuses on secondary students, including middle school and high school-aged students, to teach bicycling as transportation.

“It is working with WSDOT to develop a curriculum and a guide that’s going to help us develop the program that we kind of laid the framework for. The idea is to teach kids at that middle-schoolish age about how to safely ride a bike to and from school and around the community, and to go and see friends and live their lives,” Witte said.

The program requires instructors to teach maintenance and operations of a bicycle, proper helmet fitting, traffic education, riding on roads with and without bicycle lanes, riding on sidewalks and off sidewalks, around schools, and through controlled intersections and uncontrolled intersections.

The program likewise requires that when it ends, as long as a teen or tween completes the program, they will be given a bicycle through the grant, via the earn-a-bike component.

“This is a new program for Cascade and WSDOT, so some of those details are still being worked out,” Witte said. “We’re probably going to have a better idea what the program’s going to look like at the end of August. We’re going to have a process for students and families to apply because the focus is on quality. We would rather have a smaller number of kids get a good education than a ton of kids get a little bit, because we really want this to be a practical and lifelong skill.”

Cascade works with WSDOT to identify qualified recipients of grant funding through the School-Based Bicycle Safety Education Program, and to administer those grants.

The program is funded for one year, but at the end of the year, as long as the state doesn’t cut the funding or WSDOT doesn’t completely change its goal for the funds, the city would be able to apply to renew for another year and potentially keep the program going for many years to come.

This new program, which starts this fall, will not be the only one the city is running. It has learn-to-ride programs called Pedal Power, and it is working with the younger kids and special needs kids with its Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program at several of the elementary schools. And now with the pump track and skills track at Cedar Lanes Park up and going strong, it is offering a summer camp next week at the park in southeast Auburn.