Saturday, May 3

A silver medal for cycling

Missoula has just been recognized (again) by the League of American Bicyclists as a silver level Bicycle-friendly Community. This is a genuine accomplishment, since out the 212 towns that have applied since the program began only 84 have been given a bronze or above. Missoula's commitment to alternative transportation has always been fairly obvious, but it's nice to see how we stack up to an objective nationwide benchmark. Next is gold.

I noticed that the Bicycle-friendly communities website didn't have any pictures for Missoula. We somehow managed to inherit the pictures from Milwaukee, including a random shot of some Santa Claus convention. That won't do. I decided to take a couple of pictures on my walk home from downtown this afternoon, in case the good folks at the League want some royalty-free photos.




Update: A Complete Streets bill has just been introduced in the House, which would require transportation plans to provide fair access to roads for all users. The senate received a similar piece of legislation back in March. This is a bipartisan endeavor that deserves to be passed. The Complete Streets website offers some practical ways that you can lend support to this bill.

1 comment:

Steve Davis said...

Sounds like you're another Missoula Jacobite. An Eric Jacobsonian that is. Reading his book a few years after getting interested in urbanism was part of the reason I left journalism and came here to DC and Smart Growth America. Thanks for picking up the Complete Streets post...

(Steve Davis actually, though my old Blogger ID is my old blogging pseudonym from my newspaper days, Bill McNeal.)