The City of Bend recently released a video touting all the recent bicycle infrastructure upgrades that have occurred over the past few months. We’re VERY excited to see the city, which has been partnering with Commute Options and the Bend Police Department, take alternative transportation seriously. Adding bike lanes, sharrows and colored bike lanes—it’s all a huge step forward for Bend.
But we’re not even close to competing with the brilliant biking infrastructure of similar-sized cities like Boulder, Billings, Mont. and Eugene. Bike lanes in Bend are still broken into sections and lack east-west and north-south connectivity (the city and Commute Options are working on this). Basically, and despite Bend’s fit, bike-crazy population, plenty of residents still don’t feel comfortable commuting on two wheels. I don’t think we can deem Bend “extremely safe” for bikes until people like my 64-year-old mother feel good about riding from Juniper to downtown.
Increased ridership is a good gauge of just how bike-friendly a city truly is.
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2013.
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This is great to see. But there is still A LOT of work to be done in Bend because the bottom line is that the majority of people still do not feel safe riding around Bend, just as James points out.
The majority of the people feeling comfortable riding around town seems like a reasonable goal for Bend doesn’t it?