Score card on Cedar Rapids bike-friendliness released

CEDAR RAPIDS — Cedar Rapids is moving in the right direction when it comes to bike friendliness, according to a League of American Bicyclists score card released this week.

Cedar Rapids strengths are in encouraging bike culture and enforcing cyclists rights on the road, but lags in ridership levels that define top biking cities in the country, according to the score card, The League of American Bicyclists scores stem from a site visit to Cedar Rapids last fall and mark improvement from a 2014 review.

'The review is definately promising, though I don't anticipate us submitting another application by August, which is the next deadline,' said Ron Griffith, a Cedar Rapids traffic engineer and design coordinator.

Cedar Rapids earned a bronze level rating as a Bike Friendly Community in 2014, and has designs on elevating its status. That won't come this year, Griffith noted.

Many communities around the country ask the Washington, D.C.-based cycling advocacy organization to provide guidance and validation for bike-friendliness. The League of American Cyclists ranks communities on a sliding scale from bronze at the lowest, silver, gold, platinum and diamond as the highest.

Of nine categories in the score card, Cedar Rapids ranked in the silver range in five categories, including crash rates, fatality rates, engineering, public feedback and planning; gold in three categories, including encouragement, enforcement, and education; and bronze in just one category: ridership.

Ridership is a tricky figure to quantify, though. The U.S. Census Bureau is a primary source for the data, which is identified by commuting patters. Based on that data, .5 percent of the population bike.

The information is several years behind and isn't very accurate, Griffith said.

'Ridership is big piece of the puzzle,' Griffith said. 'The (Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization)'s effort has been gathering count data to help us measure the impact of some of the new facilities. This will be more accurate and up to date than the census data.'

Anecdotally, ridership appears up, particularly on the weekends and evenings downtown and New Bohemia area, Griffith said.

'This will be the second full year of counting,' Griffith said. 'It typically takes three years to five years to see a trend, but we're hoping that after this year, we'll have some idea if we're headed in the right direction.'

Griffith said the city's bronze designation expires in 2018, and Cedar Rapids will likely reapply again in 2017.

Stephen Clark, a bicycle-friendly community specialist for the League of American Bicyclists, traveled to Cedar Rapids last September for a bike ride and to review amenities and future plans. The city's progressive thinking on cycling earned the attention of Clark's organization, which listed Cedar Rapids as one of 100 cities to visit last year.

In addition to the score card, Clark recommended three 'key steps to silver.' Those included continued expansion of the bike network, especially on 'major streets that reach key destinations with buffered or protected lanes,' host a bike themed event such as a 'Cyclovia' or open streets, and work with major employers to implement workplace incentives for biking commuting.