BFB recipients include nine gold winners: Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin; Dero Bike Rack Company; Mercy General Hospital; Planet Bike; Specialized Bicycle Components; The Hub of Detroit; Trek Bicycle Corporation; University of California, Santa Barbara; and Wheel & Sprocket, Inc.

This round of Bicycle Friendly Businesses was distinctive because of the geographic location of awarded businesses. The majority of winners are located in the Midwest – further proving that you can bike to work regardless of climate and that any state, community or business can be bicycle-friendly – and were from a varied group of businesses. “This group represented a broad range of industries, from world renowned technology firms and hoteliers to hospital and non-profits,” said Bill Nesper, Director of the Bicycle Friendly America Program. “These Bicycle Friendly Businesses, are clearly making a difference for employees, customers, and communities.”  Winners include not only bicycle-related businesses but companies like Ameriprise Financial, Corporate Headquarters; PayPal, Inc.; and International Business Machines-IBM Rochester, MN – all three with 3,000-plus employees.

There are a lot of very simple, effective and creative ways that companies are finding to get people back on their bikes, and the League is proud to recognize the efforts of working America to make our nation a more bike-friendly place. Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, Calif., has reduced the number of parking spaces they need at the hospital by convincing people to ride their bikes to work. “We determined that it was less expensive to pay people to ride their bike to work than to add more parking spaces,” said Dave Brandeberry, Manager of Mercy General Hospital’s Cycling Program.

Companies across the country are realizing that getting their employees moving – either to or from work, in course of work, or even in their own time – is good for business. The BFB program provides a roadmap to all businesses that apply, providing a step-by-step plan to further improve their bicycle friendliness.

This is the fourth time BFB winners have been named since the program’s inception in 2008, marks the ongoing success of the program and continued momentum amongst businesses to provide a more bike-friendly environment. Applying for BFB recognition is easy and free. Applicants receive technical assistance from the League staff as well as tools to evaluate and assess their bicycle friendliness through the application process. The BFB application is available online at www.bicyclefriendlybusiness.org. Click here to see our winter 2010 winners. Click here to see a complete list of winners.

The Bicycle Friendly Community and Bicycle Friendly Business programs are generously supported by program partners Bikes Belong and Trek Bicycle’s One World, Two Wheels Campaign.

~Meghan Cahill
League Director of Communications

Users can now choose biking when deciding how to get to their destination, starting today, March 10, 2010. If you’re one of the 57 million Americans who ride a bike, mapping your daily commute, and planning recreational or trail rides just became easier. According to Google this has been the most requested addition to Google Maps, and the League is delighted that they have chosen the National Bike Summit to unveil this new feature. Google’s announcement further proves the importance of the Summit and the bicycle movement in helping our nation become a more Bicycle Friendly America. The Google biking directions will make it that much easier for bicyclists to get to work, school or play.

This new feature includes: step-by-step bicycling directions; bike trails outlined directly on the map; and a new “Bicycling” layer that indicates bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly roads. The directions feature provides step-by-step, bike-specific routing suggestions – similar to the directions provided by our driving, walking, or public transit modes. Simply enter a start point and destination and select “Bicycling” from the drop-down menu. You will receive a route that is optimized for cycling, taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible.

Visit http://maps.google.com/biking to try out this new feature. Biking directions for Google Maps is currently in Beta. Follow the League’s news feed on the new Google feature on the League’s Blog, Facebook and Twitter. If you have any further questions, contact Meghan Cahill at 202.822.1333 or meghan@bikeleague.org. Also, download and share our press release here.

~Meghan Cahill
League Director of Communications

Riders will be dressed in their finest turn of the century era wools, tweeds, silks and argyles. Riders will also have the opportunity to be judged and awarded prizes based on appearance, authenticity, originality, and creativity.

Tweed rides have been organized around the world and in cities across the nation since the early 1900’s. Check out Washington DC’s inaugural Tweed Ride on November 15, 2009.

Washington DC's Tweed ride

~Lisa Reitz
League Membership and Events

The Bicycle Commuter Benefit has been on the books since January 1, 2009, and more and more businesses are starting to use it! Through our Bicycle Friendly Business program we have compiled a list of businesses – big, small, east coast, west coast, and everywhere in between – that are encouraging pedaling through this benefit. Take a look at the list of BFB applicants who offer the benefit. This list is just a sample of participating businesses. There are a lot more out there. If you are aware of any we didn’t include, let us know. We’ll add them to the list. To learn more about how your business can implement the benefit visit our Commuter Benefit FAQs page.

~Ailson Dewey
Program Specialist, Bicycle Friendly America

The Benchmarking report provides information on programs and statistics for the 50 states, as such it is good companion to the League’s state ranking – see the Bicycle Friendly State Rankings by category. It also includes some graphs that illustrate some key correlations.

Let’s start with the obvious. The share of bicycling and walking to work in a state is strongly correlated with the share of the adult population that gets at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day. The percent of people that walk and bike to work is still small compared to the populations that meet these minimums, so rather than concluding causation, it appears that the factors that impact bicycling levels – policies, infrastructure, land use, culture – also impact overall physical activity. The commuters who are walking and biking to work probably help the physical activity numbers as well.

Speaking of land use, on average, cities with higher densities have higher levels of bicycling and walking. New Orleans is a notable outlier on the right side of the graph with a high bike/walk mode share and (currently) low density. You could spend a day thinking about the individual cases, but the overall pattern holds up well statistically (r=0.67).

Now it is excuse-busting time. Notice that when I listed the factors that influence bicycling and walking levels above, I didn’t mention weather. That’s because weather doesn’t appear to matter as much as people would often like to believe. You may already know that the hardy folks in Canada bicycle more than those of in the county immediately to their south.  The Benchmarking researchers compared bicycling levels to average summer and winter temperatures and didn’t find any statistically significant results. Alaska, for example, posts a significantly higher bicycling mode share than states like Arkansas, North Carolina, Delaware, and Missouri. Cold states such as Minnesota, Idaho, Montana and Maine also manage relatively high mode shares.

Finally, the report includes another safety in numbers-style graph. Often you see these graphs for one city with an increasing bicycling rate and decreasing crash rate over time, or they will compare European cities. This graph presents a cross-sectional look at the fifty U.S. states and fatalities per 10,000 cyclists. Again, you can see that, on average, states with higher rates of cycling have lower fatality rates.

These are just a few examples of the topics covered in the report. I’ve been thinking of the proper analogy to describe the benchmarking report. The Farmer’s Almanac comes to mind. But a book of baseball statistics may be a better analogy. If you were to start a bike-friendly fantasy league, like the baseball and football fantasy leagues out there, this would be your go-to resource. Consider it, you and your friends draft cities that you think will most improve on their bike-to-work mode share in the next year. Is Portland, Ore. going to continue its growth? Is Nashville, Tenn. set to have a breakout year? The Benchmarking report offers a complete look at the state of bicycling in each of the United States and could hold that statistical nugget that will lead your fantasy bicycle-friendly community team to victory. But I digress…Be one of the hundreds who have downloaded the full Benchmarking Report.

Thank you to Kristen Steele of the Alliance for Bicycling and Walking for the Jpegs.

~Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

1) Buy your loved ones a bike! Purchase a Trek, and you will indirectly support the League. Trek graciously supports League programs and initiatives. As part of Trek’s One World, Two Wheels campaign, Trek donates $1 to the League’s Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) program for every Trek helmet sold in the U.S., for a total three-year commitment of more than $1 million.

2) Give the gift of League membership! In addition to receiving the premier publication American Bicyclists for cyclists and bicycle advocates, education and industry leaders,  your loved ones will become part of the growing bicycle movement, supporting a Bicycle Friendly America and will have access to advocacy updates and education opportunities. Learn more about the benefits of membership.

3) Jazz vocalist Alexis Cole has recently released her latest CD, The Greatest Gift. An interesting element to this release is that proceeds will benefit the World Bicycle Relief — an organization dedicated to providing bicycles to people in developing countries around the world. World Bicycle Relief allows these individuals access to transportation and promotes independence, empowerment, and sustainability. Listen to a track from the album here.

4) And finally, if you would like to give a gift to all of those who ride a bike in America, donate to the League. Protecting cyclists’ rights is absolutely critical. We need your help today to support the work of the League, and we can’t do it without you. Check out the League’s 2009 Report Card to see how your contributions have helped us deliver on the League’s mission.

Happy holidays from the League of American Bicyclists! Hopefully, you can enjoy a wintry ride!

Courtesy of Anna Kelso

~Meghan Cahill
League Director of Communications

Yesterday, Peter Jacobsen, author of the famous “Safety in numbers” study, Francesca Raccioppi, and Harry Rutter published a paper called “Who owns the roads? How motorized traffic discourages walking and bicycling.” The paper gathers the available evidence  on the impact of traffic on levels of active transportation. They found that the “real and perceived danger and discomfort imposed by traffic discourage walking and bicycling. Accurately or not, pedestrians and bicyclists judge injury risk and respond accordingly. Although it can be difficult to measure these effects, observed behavior provides good evidence for these effects, with the strongest association being an inverse correlation between volumes and speeds of traffic and levels of walking and cycling.”
Here are some findings taken straight from the report:

• In the USA, 14 percent of people on crosswalks ran rather than walked across the road. In a study of driver behavior at Zebra crossings, only 5 percent of motorists yielded to pedestrians.
• When the roadways are equipped with sidewalks, nearly four times as many people walk. More than six times as many people walk along two-lane roads as four-lane roads.
• Men and women bicycle as different levels, possibly reflecting different attitudes to risk. In communities with low levels of cycling, more men than women bicycle, but, as the number of bicyclists increases, the sex differences diminish.
• For children who live within a mile of school, the share of children walking or bicycling to school dropped from close to 90 percent  in 1969 to 31 percent 30 years later.

Alarming as these findings may be, the authors observe that traffic can be made less dangerous and more pleasant with relative ease, compared to changing land use patterns and population density. Traffic calming measures, lower speed limits, congestions pricing, proper bicycling facilities, and otherwise prioritizing the safety of non-motorized users can all be implemented without major changes to infrastructure. And if we make these low impact, low cost changes we can expect higher rates of cyclists; and then increased safety from those numbers.

Finally, the authors rightly question the use of fear-based advertising in safety efforts, calling for more research into the discouraging impact such campaigns have on walking and bicycling. Our friend Mikael at Copenhagenize would agree. If there is a dampening effect then, overall heath can be hurt by reducing physical activity.

UPDATE: A commenter asks what can be done to get city planners in local communities to address these safety concerns. One way is through positive reinforcement. The League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly Community program recognizes cities that make an effort to improve cycling conditions. The criteria include provision of safe facilities.

~Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

Santa Cruz has numerous encouragement and education programs such as Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day, the Zero Interest Bike Loan program offered by Ecology Action, and the Bike Smart! and Ride N’ Stride school education programs. All of these things combined, along with Santa Cruz’s impressive environment for on-road and off-road riding, make the community a model to follow. Santa Cruz Seaside Company provides free breakfast to all employees who bicycle to work on Bike to Work Day,  provides secure bike lockers,  showers, emergency ride home service. Seaside Company is also a sponsor of the Amgen Tour of California and many other local tours.

While the city and Santa Cruz  Seaside Company may find it amusing to still be noted as the backdrop to the film, it is the recognition through our programs that has lasting results to their residents, visitors and employees.  The Bicycle Friendly America program staff is here to offer them assistance (and your community and business as well!) to continue to improve.

~Jeff Peel
League BFA Program Specialist

Last week Education Director Preston Tyree and Bicycle Friendly America Director Bill Nesper were in San Antonio, Texas for the San Antonio Bike Summit. The city invited League staff to come and speak about helping San Antonio become a Bicycle Friendly Community, and we jumped at the opportunity! The Summit was attended by the mayor and city manager, as well as leaders from city departments, local businesses, and cycling organizations. The day was filled with great ideas and next steps to making San Antonio a better place for cycling. The group ended the excellent event with a ride through downtown led by Mayor Julian Castro. Local media picked up the story here and here.

And this past Saturday, Bicycle Friendly America Program Specialist Jeff Peel participated in the PA Mountain Bike Club Summit in Chambersburg, Pa. with our good friends at IMBA and 40 other off-road cycling advocates from across the state. Advocates learned about funding and grant options for trail construction from Michael Piaskowski of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources (DCNR), as well as the recent work that went into Pennsylvania’s State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) – which addresses both on and off-road cycling issues in accessing the state’s parks and open lands. Recreation Program Manager Heather Bennett discussed the role mountain biking plays in the plan and how, through their tireless advocacy, IMBA now has a seat at the table and is seen as a partner.  In working on the plan, DCNR surveyed Pennsylvania residents to find out what they wanted to see change in their community for cyclists, and there was an overwhelming response in favor of more bike lanes, paths and access to trails.

Following the findings of the survey, Peel discussed ways participants can create a Bicycle Friendly Community in their hometown. Building off workshops at the IMBA World Summit, National Bike Summit and IMBA/League collaboration on “Linking Downtown to Dirt” article in Dirt Rag Magazine; Peel described ways communities have used off-road cycling as a way to encourage more bicycling and examples of how off-road riding is being accommodated in urban environments, highlighting High Bridge Park in New York City, Gateway Green in Portland, Ore. and Singletrack Mind Initiative in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Cyclists of all ages can enjoy riding pump tracks.

The event then moved to the Chambersburg Pump Track. Linked by the Chambersburg Rail Trail and PA Bike Route S, the park is a great example of the type of recreational riding facility both the League and IMBA hope to see communities create more of in the future.

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The study itself is not available – it was presented at the American College of Surgeons’ 95th annual Clinical Congress in Chicago – so we are left to interpret the Reuters article and a news release from the University of Colorado.

From Reuters:

The severity of injuries and time spent hospitalized for bicycle injuries tended to increase in the past decade, according to the findings…The number of chest injuries rose by 15 percent, while abdominal injuries increased threefold over the last five years.

It may well be true that bicycling injuries are becoming more severe, but before we jump to too many conclusions about what this means, there is a lot more we need to know. From what we already know, however, it is clear that the reporting on these findings has been overblown and sometimes plainly inaccurate.

The first obvious point to make is the limited scope of the study – 329 bicycling injuries in one Denver hospital between 1996 and 2006 – hardly justifies the headline’s claim that the study says anything about what is happening in the entire U.S. How much can we generalize about the findings from the Rocky Mountain Regional Trauma Center in Denver? The author of the study, Jeffry Kashuk, made this point in the University of Colorado release saying, “These results were stunning but we must remember that this is only a single center study. Our findings and data need to be verified by a larger, multi-centered national study.”

It is not actually clear how stunning the results are. According to the University of Colorado release, one of the researchers plotted the locations of the crashes on a Denver map, and noticed that the “major concentration of collisions took place in the downtown urban areas and the majority of riders were older males, suggesting a greater frequency of urban commuters opposed to recreational riders.”

Reuter’s continues:

The rise in injury severity likely reflects an increased rate of “motor vehicle associated injuries, which might suggest, along with a trend toward older age, that the injuries occurred in commuters more frequently than the past, as opposed to recreational riders,” Kashuk said.

He is saying that injuries are more severe when a bicyclist crashes with a car than in other types of bicycle crashes. He is not saying that there is a greater risk of crashing with a car than before. He is also not saying that car-crash injuries are getting more severe. It appears that the study did not control for the type of riding that led to the injuries, focusing instead on the change in injury severity over time. He is saying that as people ride in traffic more, there will be more “motor vehicle associated injuries.”

We know from the U.S. Census Bureau that the percentage of bicycle commuters in Denver increased 93% just between 2000 and 2006. Thus an increase in the types of injuries more associated with commuting is not surprising.

The study is not saying that bicycle commuting is becoming more dangerous – just that more people are doing it and therefore there are more serious injuries in one Denver hospital. That makes headlines like this one from Denver’s ABC affiliate – “Injuries To Cyclists Who Commute Becoming More Severe” – inaccurate and misleading. The injuries may be more severe, but the study doesn’t appear to claim that commuter injuries are becoming more severe.

The author of the report rightly calls for more safe accommodation of cyclists to avoid these injuries. And he is certainly correct that “There is a paucity of studies looking specifically at bicycle injuries”.

Headlines like the ones being attached to the Denver study may deter some people from riding. That would actually have a negative impact on the safety for the rest of us. Peter Jacobson’s famous study “Safety in Numbers” showed that as more people ride, drivers become more aware of cyclists, making everyone safer: “The likelihood that a given person walking or bicycling will be struck by a motorist varies inversely with the amount of walking or bicycling.”

Researchers John Pucher, Jennifer Dill, and Susan Handy recently published a review of the literature on bicycling, “Infrastructure, Programs, and Policies to Increase Bicycling: An International Review”. They conclude: “The combined evidence presented in these studies indicates that the health benefits of bicycling far exceed the health risks from traffic injuries, contradicting the widespread misperception that bicycling is a dangerous activity.”

So do not let any scary headlines make you think that bicycling is becoming more dangerous. There certainly are risks, and education, proper care and investment from communities all over the country are extremely important. The good news is that the more of us out three riding, the safer – and healthier – we’ll all be.

UPDATE: The author of the study, Jeffry Kashuk, was kind enough to speak with me. He mentioned that the name of the presentation and upcoming study is Increased Popularity of Urban Bicycle Transportation in America: The Perfect Storm for an Injury Epidemic.

He summarized his argument in this way:

a. There are more bicycle commuters today

b. Bicycle commuters appear to be at risk for more severe injuries than trail-only, recreational cyclists

c. Too many urban areas, like Denver, are encouraging bicycle commuting without investing in the needed facilities to keep them safe

The result, he says, will be an epidemic of injuries to bike commuters.

He makes a perfectly legitimate point, as far as it goes. From the point of view of promoting safe cycling, there is a bit of a chicken and egg question here. Cities won’t invest in safe infrastructure if very few people ride, and people won’t ride if all they hear is about how dangerous cycling is. In my view, both promotion and safe facilities are necessary to encourage safe cycling.  Again, Dr. Kashuk is right to call for more safe facilities, but not to call for a halt to cities’ promotion efforts. We can and should do both.

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~Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst