AUBURN — Next year Park Avenue Elementary School students should be able to walk to school more safely.

The federal government has told Auburn it will soon receive $760,000 to build a walking and biking trail on Park Avenue.

The asphalt trail will be 10 feet across, wider than a sidewalk to accommodate biking and walking. It will run from Court Street to the school.

Typically, when the federal government notifies a community that the money is on its way, “it comes a few weeks after,” Dan Stewart, the bicycle and pedestrian program manager for the Maine Department of Transportation, said Friday.

That means work on the trail will begin this year, said Eric Lebelle, community services director for the city of Auburn. “This is positive news for us that those funds are coming,” he said. “We have moved ahead with the design. The next step will be to schedule public meetings.”

Safe walking and biking is the biggest need for the trail. “Currently there is no sidewalk on Park Avenue. There’s a school there,” Lebelle said. In recent years traffic on Park Avenue has increased with the school and people driving to the mall area. “We’re looking to improve safety for children as well as the adults.”

In a news release announcing the money’s coming, U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, said the trail not only will provide safe walking or biking from the downtown to the school, it could reduce traffic. Michaud is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has oversight of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Michaud praised the department for investing in a trail that will encourage more walking and biking.

Erin Guay said it is “wonderful” the trail will soon be built.

Guay is the physical activity, nutrition and tobacco manager for Healthy Androscoggin. “Childhood obesity is a tremendous health problem. Young people today are not expected to live as long as their parents,” she said. One way to change that sobering statistic is to give children more ways to be active.

A trail that’s free to use is a great way, she said, “particularly a trail that goes to a school and connects neighborhoods.” Children need 60 minutes of exercise a day. A 10-minute walk to and from school “means they’re a third of the way there,” she said.

Because they’re wider and there’s more separation from traffic, bicycle and pedestrian trails are safer than sidewalks, said MDOT’s Stewart. “They’re more inviting for people to use.”

When walking/biking trails are built, “they become an attraction. People end up spending time there walking with their kids, where before they might not have taken a walk,” Stewart said. “They create more of a community atmosphere.”