Bicycle Friendly Community

San Luis Obispo, CA | Silver Level

Community Highlights: In 2001, the San Luis Obispo County Bicycle Coalition, a non-profit advocacy organization, was formed to transform San Luis Obispo County into a safer and more livable community by promoting cycling and walking for everyday transportation and recreation through advocacy, education and outreach. The coalition advocates for better bike planning throughout the county, provides free bicycle education courses taught by LCIs, and partners with local agencies and organizations to implement numerous programs. In addition, the Coalition provides bike valet, bike ed, kidical mass, and bike kitchen programs, which serves as a hub for bicycling enthusiast. The city now has a bike boulevard, bike lanes on nearly every arterial street, several bike-only phase traffic signals, the first and only bike box created by the state transportation agency, bike paths designed for recreation and commuting, sharrows on several streets, plentiful and well-designed bike racks, on-street rack parking in several locations downtown, and traffic signals using loop and video detection that are set to detect bikes. The updated bicycle transportation plan identifies numerous other projects to add to this infrastructure including greater use of sharrows, bike boxes, bike boulevards, and road diets.
In addition, "leaderless" community rides such as Bike Happening, Tweed Ride and SLO Little 500 are very popular. The SLO International Film Festival has a Bike Nite for showing a bike related film. Bike touring is popular and many businesses cater to bike patrons.

Most Significant Recent Accomplishment: Madonna Enterprises designed and constructed a multi-use path between Madonna and Fernandez Roads. As mitigation for air quality impacts from the development of the Irish Hills Plaza retail center, the path provides an alternative route for cyclists instead of an on-street route through several challenging intersections including a pair of freeway on/off ramps.

Most Compelling Community Fact: The book “Thrive, Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way” not only declares San Luis Obispo as the happiest city in the US, but it specifically points out how bicycling infrastructure aids in that happiness.