Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Ocean City and Doylestown Earn BFC Honorable Mentions

The Bicycle Friendly Community Campaign is an awards program that recognizes municipalities that actively support bicycling. A Bicycle-Friendly Community provides safe accommodation for cycling and encourages its residents to bike for transportation and recreation. The League of American Bicyclists administers the Bicycle Friendly Community Campaign.

Once again no community in the region has earned bicycle friendly community status. Philadelphia received an honorable mention in 2006, in 2008 Doylestown and Ocean City were the latest to receive an honorable mention from the BFC Board.

This designation is one with real meaning—it is difficult to earn and important to renew. There are now 96 awarded communities in 32 states. Since the program’s inception in 2003, 245 communities have applied. “In this round, 10 communities were given honorable mentions,” Clarke said. “It is important to recognize communities as they begin to build bicycle friendliness into their network. But a designation only goes to communities with established records in two or more of the five categories.”

The five categories local and national reviewers look at are:

Education: Does the community have systems in place to train children and adult cyclists?

Engineering: Are bicyclists included in the city’s transportation plan?

Enforcement: Do police officers understand and enforce bicyclists’ rights and responsibilities?

Encouragement: Does the community participate in Bike Month, offer bike rodeos, host community bike rides, or otherwise encourage cycling?

Evaluation: Does the community have methods in place to ensure their bicyclist programs are making a difference?

1 comments:

Lynn said...

Ocean City deserves a lot of credit for the improvements they have made. My family spent much more time there this past summer because of the wonderful biking facilities. The transformation of Haven Avenue into the main bike thruway combined with the painted bike lanes on West Avenue make it possible to ride comfortably from 9th Street to 55th Street. And of course there's still the option of riding on the boardwalk each morning to enjoy the ocean view.