As part of our three part series, “Getting Federal Funding,” the Advocacy Advance partnership continues with a report on the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP).  The series is designed to provide guidance on federal funding programs that are often overlooked for bike and pedestrian projects.  The first report outlined the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement Program which can be used to fund bicycle and pedestrian projects that replace car trips with biking and walking trips. (photo by gwadzilla)

Part II of this series covers the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP).  HSIP funds can be used for all safety related bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects on public roads or trails, and provides 90 percent of project funds, with only 10 percent coming from local government or other sources.  Unfortunately, HSIP funds have been woefully underutilized since it began in 2006.  By the end of the 2009 fiscal year, $600 million in HSIP funds had not been spent.  This is especially disturbing when you consider that, in 2008, the federal government spent a total of $550 million on all bike and pedestrian projects in the nation.

Many bike and pedestrian advocates are not aware of this resource, and those that have attempted to direct HSIP funds towards bike and pedestrian infrastructure have struggled to justify project funding to their state DOTs.  The HSIP report identifies these issues and provides strategies to address them.  It also provides a number of project examples, program requirements, and state by state funding data.

Read the whole HSIP report.

~Anna Kelso
League Policy Analyst

Cycling in Tupelo isn’t exactly like cycling in Portland. It’s not even Oxford, currently Mississippi’s only Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC). Despite fond memories of bike rodeos, safety checks and riding bike lanes on my way to elementary school years ago, there hasn’t been a lot of accommodations or encouragement for bicycling in the city since. In fact a 2007 survey found only 21 people biking to work.

However, that’s all starting to change. My grandmother regularly cuts out, scans and e-mails me local newspaper clippings about bike racing, planned bike trails and new city planning staff who want to promote bikes as transportation. I haven’t had the heart to tell her the articles are online.

Thanks to the efforts of Karen Mogridge with Bike Walk Mississippi, Tupelo Bicycle Club and Tupelo Senior Planner Renee Autumn Ray, bicycling is starting to improve in my hometown. While Frerer won’t be able to see the results of these efforts, his death has contributed towards this renewed energy. Bike Walk Mississippi has introduced a three foot passing legislation on the state level but local advocates weren’t waiting. Bolstered by testimony from Liria Frerer, the boy’s mother, Tupelo became the first community in the state to pass its own 3 foot passing law.

From NEMS Daily Journal:

“The importance of this law is about education and awareness,” Frerer said at the podium, where she paused more than once to maintain her composure. The measure passed unanimously and received a standing ovation from the numerous residents who had gathered to support Frerer at City Hall. According to the new ordinance, motorists must either switch lanes or provide a 3- to 6-foot buffer zone when passing someone on foot, horseback, bicycle, motorcycle, scooter or farm equipment.

Our BFC program includes model communities like Chicago, Portland and Boulder. We recognize that these cities are not indicative of most of the country but small and large communities accross the nation are becoming BFCs. Currently 124 of the 318 total applicants have a BFC four-year designation. While we think any place can learn from our BFCs’ examples and best practices, it is with great pleasure – and a whole lot of hometown pride – that I can now point to Tupelo as an example. If a town like Tupelo can work to create safer cycling, so can your community. See how your hometown stacks up using our quick scorecard.

~Jeff Peel
League BFA Program Specialist

Read the notice and and find out how to provide comments.

Visit the League’s Bicycle Friendly Community Getting Started Guide to find examples of how and what you can do to improve bicycling in your community.

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

Despite the growth in bicycle commuting, it still strikes many people as unusual. In fact, judging by this report in the “Twitter Room” section of The Hill (“Tweets you need to read”) a Congressman riding his bike to a bill signing on Capitol Hill is more noteworthy than a Congressman using Twitter. The article relates the fact that Congressman Earl Blumenauer tweeted the following:

“Biking to White House to join the President and GLBT champions for signing Hate Crimes into law.”

The article, of course, mentions the Congressional Bike Caucus. The list of the members of the Congressional Bike Caucus on Congressman Blumenauer’s website needs to be updated.  The caucus has grown, thanks to enthusiasm generated at the most recent National Bike Summit. There are now 218 Bike Caucus members. View the full list of Bike Caucus Members in the 111th Congress.

Meanwhile in other Earl Blumenauer news, Streetsfilms got to tag along as Transportation Alternatives’ Paul Steely White and Noah Budnick gave him a tour of New York City’s new bicycle facilities. Good stuff…

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~Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

While no doubt hoping to stir a lively debate, the author rehashed the tired – and false – notion that motorists and cyclists are at war and cannot coexist peacefully. The overwhelming majority of cyclists has absolutely no intention or desire to deliberately obstruct motorists. A tiny minority of riders may be oblivious and thoughtless about what’s going on behind them – and very, very occasionally a critical mass ride or equivalent will deliberately fill up a street or intersection for a few minutes, once a month, in a handful of cities across the country. Not exactly apocalyptic stuff.

To be honest, drivers are very much more effective at clogging up city streets, twice a day, every work day, 52 weeks of the year, all by themselves without any help from cyclists. Seriously, if a few more people walked, took transit or biked instead…?!

In one case highlighted in the article, a driver – apparently already notorious among the Los Angeles bicycling community for similar prior behavior – passed a group of cyclists heading down a canyon road and deliberately slammed on the brakes in front of them, with fairly obvious consequences. He was mad at having to wait behind them.

By chance, my son and I were in the LA area the week after this happened. As we drove down some of the amazing canyon roads, at the speed limit, we were illegally passed by impatient motorists who crossed the solid yellow center lines on blind corners and as we approached intersections – not just once or twice, but enough times that it became something of a standing joke between us. Except that it isn’t funny when people get hurt.

The other case involved a Maryland driver who hit and killed a cyclist in front of her that she “didn’t see”. The USA Today article, local media and even early statements from the Maryland Highway Patrol suggested that if the rider had been in the right portion of the lane instead of the middle, the crash might have been prevented – a little hard to fathom, given that the motorist didn’t see the cyclist when he was straight in front of her. Surely we should expect drivers to be aware of what is going on right in front of them – and surely the news media and police should bolster that expectation, not excuse careless, dangerous or inattentive driving.

The author contacted the League for a “little perspective”. He used a “little” of what Jeff Peel had to say in response. He actually managed to single out phrases that had both cyclists and motorists irritated with us at the same time, which is no small feat!

Our Smart Cycling program teach that there are times when cyclists do need to take the lane, even on streets with bike lanes: when the bike lane or right hand side of the travel lane is blocked, or has a dangerous drainage grate or pothole, or has broken glass, piles of snow or leaves – all things which can cause a cyclist to crash. It’s really no different for motorists encountering delivery trucks, wheel-swallowing potholes, broken down vehicles, illegally parked cars, etc. You don’t just drive over them if you can help it.

There may be times when the travel lane is simply too narrow to share side by side with a car, and rather than ride in the gutter or on the sidewalk (surprising to many, sidewalks are among THE most likely places for everyday cyclists to get in a crash with a car) it is safer for the bicyclist and the motorist for the cyclist to ride in the center of the lane. Not to get in the way; and not on the interstate. A cyclist is more visible, and frankly more predictable, where you can see them and see their intentions.

There are times when a cyclist may be going straight ahead and there’s a right turn only lane – to the motorist, it may appear that the cyclist is “in the middle of the road”; to the cyclist, they are just trying to get where they are going without having someone turn right in front of them. The same is true if a cyclist is making a left turn – they should usually be making it from the left side of the lane or left-turn lane.

Truthfully, this whole debate isn’t really just about bicyclists and bicycling versus motorists and cars – even though that makes for better copy and more strident discussion. It’s about civility and safety on our streets, for which we all share responsibility. There are rogue cyclists and rogue drivers; and failure to comply with traffic laws – be they stop signs for cyclists or speed limits for motorists – is sadly endemic in our culture, and we tolerate it at our individual and collective peril every time we hit the road.

And don’t even get me started on cell phone use and texting while driving…or cycling.

Andy Clarke
President, League of American Bicyclists

Lucky kid

From the New York Times:

BALANCE bikes, long popular in Europe, are making inroads in the United States as a way to teach children to ride a two-wheel bicycle without the need for training wheels. The bikes do not have pedals; instead, toddlers use their feet to steady themselves, propel forward and brake. Eventually they learn to coast — and balance.

Technically, the bikes are ride-on toys, because they lack gears. But they do look like small bicycles, with rubber tires, adjustable seats and adjustable handlebars (on the metal-frame ones, at least). All are low to the ground, so that diminutive riders can straddle them while standing on both feet.

“This makes them a better option than taking the pedals off a regular kids’ bike, since the bike may still be too tall to stand over,” said Tim Blumenthal, the executive director of Bikes Belong, a nonprofit advocacy group in Boulder, Colo. Velo Bartolome, age 2, recently tested five balance bikes, each no more than 11 pounds or $98. His father, Arsenio, a sales representative for City Bikes in Chevy Chase, Md., and Washington, D.C., said that a lightweight bike was easier for younger riders to control. “The learning curve for building and riding the bikes was quick,” Mr. Bartolome said. “About 15 minutes for each of us.”

~Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

We’ve seen other programs like this be successful across the country. For example, in Platinum Portland, Ore. the Community Cycling Center (CCC) offers their Create a Commuter program, partnering with job placement programs in helping the unemployed get back on their feet and access to jobs without the expensive of a car. Local shop Joe Bike has lent a hand to the CCC and set-up their own Cash for Clunkers program.

We know that 1/3 of the population are either too old or too young to drive, and an article in last week’s New York Times even highlights the fact that when given enough choices, people may even choose to give up their cars. However, programs like Bikes for Work and Create a Commuter are reaching those who are looking for a new transportation option, not out of choice to be personally more sustainable, but out of economic necessity. We’ve shown there are economic benefits to creating the infrastructure needed to support cycling, but how is your community serving those with the greatest need for affordable transportation options? Email the League, and let us know!

~Jeff Peel
League BFA Program Specialist

Additionally, the American Community Survey (ACS) recently released their 2008 report, which includes community bicycle mode share percentages from 2000 to 2008. We crunched the numbers and found that BFCs had higher levels of bicycle commuting than cities not participating in the program. The average BFC bicycle commuter share is 1.5 percent, 2.5 times the national average. St. Louis, MO, for example, is one of the 70 largest cities surveyed in the ACS and a new bronze level BFC. The community nearly doubled their number of bicycle commuters from 2000 to 2008. The city has completed several noteworthy projects within the past year, including 53 new miles of on-street additions to the bikeway system, a $10 million investment, and an expansion of bicycling education offerings for children and adults. This shows that like cities across the country, making smart investments in building a welcoming community for biking that will inevitably lead to more, healthier and sustainable transportation options and increased recreational opportunities.

We’ve seen the BFC program revolutionize the way states and communities evaluate their quality of life, sustainability and transportation networks, while allowing them to benchmark their progress and work toward improving their bicycle-friendliness. The application process to become a BFC is rigorous (though staff is on hand to assist!); currently only 124 of the 318 total applicants have a BFC four-year designation. The renewal process and four levels of the award – platinum, gold, silver and bronze – provide a clear incentive for communities to continuously improve.

Interested in learning more about how your community stacks up? Take a minute and rate it with our new quick scorecard, or get in touch with Bicycle Friendly Community program staff at info@bicyclefriendlycommmunity.org or 202.822.1333.

2009 Fall Bicycle Friendly Community Winners
(Bronze award unless otherwise noted)
Breckenridge, CO (Silver)
Anchorage, AK
Baton Rouge, LA
Calistoga, CA
Grand Rapids, MI
Greensboro, NC
Greenville, SC
Indianapolis & Marion County, IN
Iowa City, IA
North Little Rock, AR
Riverside, CA
Sioux Falls, SD
Sonoma, CA
St. Louis, MO
Tallahassee, FL
Boca Raton, FL (Renewal)
Chandler, AZ (Renewal)
Eugene, OR (Renewal, Gold)

2009 Honorable Mentions
Annapolis, MD; Baltimore, MD; Cedar Rapids, IA; Charleston, SC; Cumberland, MD; Emerald Isle, NC
Gresham, OR; Hamilton County, OH; Jacksonville, FL; Nashville, TN; New Orleans, LA; Norman, OK
Palm Desert, CA; Portland, ME; Rockville, MD; Sumter County, SC; Warrenville, IL

~Jeff Peel
League BFA Program Specialist