Bicycle Friendly Community

Santa Fe, NM | Bronze Level

Community Highlights: Santa Fe is an ideal bicycling environment due to its compact size, moderate terrain, and pleasant weather.  The city’s earliest efforts to take a comprehensive approach at bicycle planning resulted in the 1993 Bikeways Master Plan. Santa Fe’s bikeway system is a combination of on-road facilities, including designated bike lanes, striped shoulders, and lanes shared with motor vehicle traffic; and off-road facilities, including paved multi-use trails and formal or informal soft-surface paths. Bike Month celebrations have been a major venue for education and encouragement of bicycling since the 1990s. Other opportunities to celebrate the bicycle in Santa Fe have included National Trails Day, Walk and Roll to School Day, and celebrations when new trail segments have been opened. Transportation-oriented rides - specifically intended to increase knowledge of local bikeways, to introduce new riders to comfortable routes, and to inform and foster dialog on bikeway planning - include Bike-to-Work Day convoys organized by the City and other partners and “Community Cruises” supported by the MPO. Various other formal and informal group rides, currently embodied in a weekly “loops” event, combine fun and education for cyclists and would-be cyclists. To make bicycling a safer and more convenient form of everyday transportation for citizens and visitors, non-profit groups have worked to raise awareness of bicycles among motorists through campaigns such as “Give Bicyclists Five Feet” slogan boards placed throughout the city and created traffic safety messages for bicyclists.

Most Significant Recent Accomplishment: The City of Santa Fe has invested over 8 million dollars in constructing new trails, both on and off street. This included the development of a master plan for the off-road La Tierra Trails.

Most Compelling Community Fact: Non-profit and other groups, including bike shops, organizers of the Santa Fe Century, and students of the Santa Fe Preparatory School, are specifically working to make bicycle transportation an affordable transportation option for lower income New Mexicans by way of repairing and donating rehabilitated bicycles.