Monday, May 17, 2010

Spokane Named Bicycle Friendly Community

Spokane Mayor Mary Verner announced today that the League of American Bicyclists has named the City of Spokane a Bronze Level Bicycle Friendly Community.

This award program is designed to revolutionize the way communities evaluate their quality of life, sustainability, and transportation networks, while allowing them to benchmark their progress and work toward improving their bicycle-friendliness.

Only 140 of the 359 total applicants for the award have received designation. There are four levels of the award: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.

There are several accomplishments that helped the City accomplish this designation, including:

- Completion of a Master Bike Plan.
- Organized bike and pedestrian counts.
- Supporting events like SpokeFest and Bike to Work Week.
- Adding “sharrows” on 37th Avenue and Southeast Boulevard.
- Completing the second phase of the Fish Lake Trail.
- Adding a Bike-Ped Coordinator postion to look for grant and other opportunities to expand our bike and pedestrian network.
- Work on a “complete streets” concepts for our community.

3 comments:

Barb Chamberlain said...

Also worthy of note: Mountain Gear was named a Silver level Bike Friendly Business and Rings & Things a Bronze level. This happened in 2009 but they didn't do news releases & we just happened to find out recently.
More on Mountain Gear: http://bit.ly/7Z1pzM
More on Rings & Things: http://bit.ly/d9qYtv

@BarbChamberlain
Co-Chair, Bike to Work Spokane
Vice-Chair, City of Spokane Bicycle Advisory Board

Barb Chamberlain said...

Follow-up question: We plan to put on a workshop for businesses interested in learning from Mountain Gear and Rings & Things about why it's good for their businesses to be bike friendly and how others can get ready and apply.

Do you know business owners/managers who would be interested? Email info@biketoworkspokane.org with contact information and we'll put them on the list to receive an invitation when we get the workshop put together.

@BarbChamberlain

SRTC Staff said...

Thanks Barb, and a belated congratulations to Mountain Gear and Rings & Things. Next time give yourself a pat on the back and a news release so the rest of us can.

That's interesting about the business workshops. I will do some brainstorming and see if I can come up with any myself.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.