Pick up the pace

State needs to grow cycling as transportation

Last week, the League of American Bicyclists released its annual Bicycle Friendly State rankings and report cards. Arkansas ranks No. 39 nationally and No. 10 (out of 12) among Southern states (bikeleague.org/content/ ranking).

Given the hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in cycling infrastructure and programs over the last decade, it is unfortunate and perhaps surprising that our state ranks so poorly.

Why is that? To understand our ranking, one must dive deeper into the nuances of funding, infrastructure, mode share, and policies.

Yes, across the state, incredible progress has been made in bike infrastructure, namely through the investments by philanthropic organizations (such as the Walton Family Foundation), cities in northwest and central Arkansas, and the Arkansas Parks and Recreation Foundation (Monument Trails).

However, most of this investment is primarily recreation-based ( soft- surface multiuse trails) or off-street shared-use paved trails ( Razorback Regional Greenway in northwest Arkansas and Arkansas River Trail in central Arkansas), and thus our bicycle mode share (using a bicycle for transportation) is extremely low.

This isn’t saying that paved trails aren’t used for transportation — they are — but without a complete connected network, only the bravest of riders (or those that don’t own a car) use them as a mode of transportation.

This is because a first- and last-mile gap exists in even the most built-out cities to get people safely on bicycles to the front door of their schools, their work, their grocery stores, and other essential destinations.

Think of it as if we only had built interstates within and between cities, but never local streets allowing you to drive your car safely to and from your house, school, or work.

Overall, the report card points to a lack of state goals, a lack of policies that institutionalize bicycle improvements, and a low percentage of federal and state dollars utilized, resulting in a low ranking.

What will it take to see our ranking improve? The good news is that the significant increase in people riding bicycles for fun and health/ wellness (and the buzz around the state from those who would like to) means that if we build safe, easy, convenient, and equitable bicycle infrastructure networks, they will get used. We can increase our ridership from a ranking of 46 out of 50.

To get this type of network, we must increase the use of best practices in designing our streets and bicycle infrastructure to reduce the number of fatalities. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Complete Streets Policies and implementation plans will get us there. Still, we need the state to adopt these policies (there is already a state-level plan that makes these recommendations, but it hasn’t been fully implemented). This can increase our ranking on safety from 48 out of 50.

We must spend more money ( state and federal transportation dollars) on building out the local bicycle and pedestrian networks that include on-street infrastructure to connect to everyone’s front doors (like our roads for cars). This will significantly improve our 19 out of 50 ranking on spending.

What can you do? Our state (and the public) should take the report card as a call to action for working together as a collective. Residents must speak up at the local and state level and make it increasingly politically viable to invest in bicycle (and pedestrian) infrastructure.

Start organizing in your community, and if you have the time, help build a coalition of advocates encouraging the state to improve, and hold it accountable for investing in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

Contact the Arkansas Department of Transportation (www.ardot.gov/contact-ardot/) and the Arkansas State Highway Commission (www.ahtd.state.ar.us/commission.aspx) that oversees the agency. Amendment 42 created the commission that governs ArDOT; the governor and our state Legislature have less influence than other agencies.

The Commission needs to hear from you to take this report seriously and make meaningful improvements. From what I know of the Commission, it will make positive changes if its members hear from many of you.