Cedar Rapids named bicycle-friendly community

A persistent City Hall has been trying for nearly three years to secure a status as a bicycle-friendly community from the League of American Bicyclists.

On Monday, Cedar Rapids officials announced that the League has awarded the city the bronze-level designation in a rating system that runs from platinum to gold and silver and bronze.

In 2009, the city was given honorable mention status.

In Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa City and Des Moines previously secured a bronze rating. Boulder, Colo., Davis, Calif., and Portland, Ore., hold the top platinum rating with about 200 communities nationwide holding one of the four ratings. The ratings are based on five “Es”: engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation and planning.

Mayor Ron Corbett announced on Monday that he will ride his bicycle to work on Thursday to celebrate the city's newly won bicycle-friendly certification and to note that it is national Bike-to-Work Week.

In recent years, the city has added markings on certain streets and has adopted a complete-streets program in which it attempts to address bicycle use as it considers how to improve streets.

The metro area's transportation planning agency, the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, in recent weeks said it would commit most of an annual pot of between $3 million to $4 million in locally distributed federal funds to trails and bike lanes on streets. Cedar Rapids city officials, which hold a majority of seats on the MPO, pushed the change.