Newswire: Big Cities Urge Bike Friendly Streets

[For more on the Cities for Cycling initiative, see the full report we published on November 24th.]

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
December 8, 2009
Washington, D.C.

Big Cities Urge Bike Friendly Streets
Nationwide bike boom needs Federal support

Congressman Earl Blumenauer; New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan; and artist/musician David Byrne joined city officials from Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. to launch Cities for Cycling, a new effort by city governments to promote best practices in urban cycling and to increase the use of bicycles to improve urban mobility, livability and public health while reducing traffic congestion and CO2 emissions.

Cycling is booming in cities across the nation. Based on the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. census bureau, cycling as a share of transportation is up in major cities by as much as 72% from 2007-2008, with an average growth rate of over 30%.

Still much work remains to make cycling a more mainstream mobility option. Providing safe, comfortable, convenient bicycling facilities has allowed cities like Portland, New York and others to vastly increase commuter cycling and drive down injuries and fatalities to cyclists. From protected cycle-tracks to bike boxes and special traffic signals for bikes; Cities for Cycling seeks to share these best practices among leading cities and encourage State and Federal governments to adopt the new design treatments emerging from cities as standard practices, opening up funding and technical support opportunities and cutting red tape.

“Cities have been going it alone with their bike networks,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan, who is President of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. “Cities for Cyclists will create a forum to discuss and develop best practices and speed the adoption of innovative design guidelines at the federal and local levels.”

Cities for Cycling will feature an online warehouse of bike-friendly street best practice factsheets as well as a compendium of links to cities’ technical design guidelines for innovative bicycle facilities. The project will convene leading bicycle experts from cities around the United States and abroad to share information and stimulate the development of a new generation of better bicycle facilities.

Cities for Cycling is a project of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and is supported by Bikes Belong and the SRAM Cycling Fund. More information is available at www.nacto.org/citiesforcycling or www.citiesforcycling.org.

Contact:
Robin Lester-Kenton, New York City Department of Transportation, (212) 839-6470