The League of American Bicyclists just announced its latest list of “Bicycle Friendly Communities,” and six Chicago suburbs are on it at the “Bronze” level — seven if you include DeKalb.
Schaumburg and Highland Park were listed as renewing members of the list, which means they reapplied for the designation this year. Geneva applied for the first time but so far has gotten only the League’s “Honorable Mention” designation.
The other suburbs on the list at the Bronze level are Aurora, Batavia, Warrenville and Wilmette. They are among 14 Illinois communities on the list now, enabling our state to crack the League’s top 10 for number of towns recognized. Urbana is the one Illinois community with a “Gold” designation.
Municipalities, as well as interested businesses and universities (including Northwestern), go through a hefty application process — “which requires collaboration across city agencies and with local advocates and other partners,” the League says — to earn recognition. The League says it has expert reviewers who evaluate the submissions and give the town a report card with feedback for becoming bike-friendlier.
The resources the League provides to guide the towns are exhaustive — including multiple booklets with dozens of pages. The towns can consider such things as bicycle-friendly traffic control devices, retrofitting roads with bike lanes, requiring safe passing of bicyclists on roads, anti-harassment ordinances, required bike parking spaces, allowing bicycles on public transit and bicycle commuter reimbursement.
Those were among many, many strategies outlined in a booklet that categorized bicyclists in four levels, using data from a study in Portland, Oregon:
- 1% were “fit and fearless,” who’ll ride no matter the infrastructure.
- 7% were “comfortably confident” to ride in traffic if there were bike lanes or other facilities.
- 60% were “willing but wary” of riding on busier streets.
- 33% were “no way no how” riding without big changes in infrastructure.
How do you think the numbers would shake out in the Chicago suburbs?
While the six suburbs won the League’s designation, we know many others have bike plans and even a lot of infrastructure in place, at least in the form of bike routes through neighborhoods if not wholesale bike lanes and paths like in Schaumburg. Work to increase bike-friendliness is being done.
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