Bicycle Friendly Community

La Crosse, WI | Silver Level

Community Highlights: La Crosse was the first city in Wisconsin to do a city-wide Safe Routes to School program and to have bike racks installed on all buses. The city continues to move the needle in creating a vibrant active cyclists haven. The city's commercial design standards require bicycle parking and all new projects have bike racks; Active Commuting Week occurs the week before Labor Day weekend; many businesses, with encouragement from the City and County, use incentives to get their employees to actively commute to work, bike or walk; City Hall has a free breakfast for all active commuters; Human Powered Trails, which builds all the mountain bike trails, holds trail building days throughout the year to maintain and improve current trails and build new ones; over Labor Day weekend, there is the 1st Annual La Crosse Bicycle Festival, which entails a full weekend of daily rides ranging from 30-100 miles and bicycle education for the experienced rider to beginners; and the City created the first annual bike free Sunday in Pettibone Park last year.

Most Significant Recent Accomplishment: La Crosse was the first city in Wisconsin to have bike racks installed on all buses. La Crosse adopted a Bicycle Plan in 1994, and as a result of that plan established a Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee and hosted the Governor’s Bicycle Conference. The city will break ground on a Downtown Mixed-Use Transit Center in September 2007 which will include bicycle parking (bike racks and bike lockers). This will be the first transit center of its kind in the state. La Crosse was one of the first in region to install bicycle detection loops at actuated intersections located on bike routes. The city now requires the installation of video detection systems at all new fully actuated traffic signals.