Even though school was out for the summer, Salem-Keizer Safe Routes to School (SK-SRTS) stayed as busy as ever. We refreshed our educational materials, updated our digital resources, expanded our fleet, and took part in local community events across the region.
This summer, we were thrilled to be invited to Keizer Blast Camp, which is designed to teach children how to be safe, responsible citizens. This provided us with the perfect stage to pilot our brand-new Transit Town layout and redesigned Pedestrian Safety Education Curriculum. Transit Town is an interactive, pop-up miniature city that gives students hands-on experience navigating urban spaces, interacting safely with local store vendors, and looking out for their peers. We were proud to partner with MAPS Credit Union, Bentley's Coffee, and Cherriots to bring this real-world training environment to life. The response from camp organizers and campers was overwhelming. Transit Town was voted the single most popular activity of the entire camp session! We are thrilled by this initial success and have 6 elementary schools signed up already for the 2026–2027 school year.
In addition, we hosted a community bike rodeo at the Mill City Back to School Resource Fair. There students learned proper helmet fitting, hand signals, and stop-sign awareness before sending them through our custom skills course. Partnering on-site, Santiam Hospital ensured every student went home with a brand-new, properly fitted helmet. We also kept busy at events in Stayton, Fun Fridays in Salem, and the Micronesian Islander Community Back to School Fair.
To keep up with exploding demand across the district, we officially purchased a second cargo trailer and ordered an additional 40 Trek bicycles for our Bike Safety Education fleet.
Building 40 bikes is no small task, so we partnered with the Rotary Club of Salem for an after-hours assembly night at the bike shop. Ten volunteers showed up, learned professional assembly skills, and worked alongside shop mechanics to build our entire new fleet in a single evening. Thanks to their hard work, the new bikes were fully prepped, branded, and delivered to storage well ahead of the first day of school.
As we enter the 2026–2027 school year, our calendar is officially packed: our team will be teaching in local schools during every single week of the academic year. 11 schools are signed up for bike safety, learn to ride, or both. 6 schools are scheduled for Pedestrian Safety Education and Transit Town. 5 schools are set to host Public Transit Safety Education with Cherriots.
This is a monumental milestone for our program. To deliver on this commitment, we are actively expanding our volunteer team. If you or someone you know is passionate about youth safety and active transit, please reach out to us to get registered as a program volunteer today!
Contact Jacob Lippert at 503-385-4880 or jlippert@mwvcog.org
