01:57 PM MST on Wednesday, May 19, 2004

By Tim Ellis / Arizona Daily Star

Tucson's reputation as one of best cities in America for bicyclists just got better.

Now the League of American Bicyclists, which for years has recognized Tucson and 27 other U.S. cities as a Bicycle Friendly Community, has revamped the way in which it evaluates cities' policies to promote bicycling. The more-stringent procedure finds the Tucson area is bicycle friendly — among the four best in the country.

The League now categorizes Tucson as a "silver" level Bicycle Friendly Community, along with Gainesville, Fla., and Olympia, Wash.

Boulder, Colo., was the only "gold" level award-winner. Seven other cities were named "bronze" award-winners.

City officials and locally prominent bicycle advocates will celebrate the new award Thursday morning in a ceremony at the Broadway Diamondback bicycle-pedestrian bridge near Downtown.

One of them, Shellie Ginn, bicycle coordinator with the city transportation Department, said this award reaffirms Tucson's reputation as a top bicycling community.

"We're honored to get this award," said Ginn said Tuesday. "And we're definitely in good company."

Richard Corbett, a longtime local bicycling advocate and regional bicycling coordinator for Pima Association of Governments, also is proud of the recognition — though he thinks this area still is under-rated.

"My assessment was that Tucson should have been named a gold-level community," said Corbett, a bicycle-safety instructor and nationally recognized bicycling expert.

Among the reasons Tucson earned the the silver award:

More than 500 miles of the bicycle lanes, routes and shared-use paths and trails.

A city policy to include bike lanes on all new-street construction and reconstruction projects.

A joint city-county Safe Routes to Schools Program, which offers help to elementary and secondary schools in the Tucson area to encourage students to ride their bikes to school, and the city-county's "Share the Road" guides for bicyclists and motorists that have been distributed to the Tucson-area police, schools, libraries, bike shops, council offices and businesses. Andy Clarke, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists, praised this area's "diverse and well-rounded program" to encourage bicycling.

"Over the years, the city has done a good job of accommodating bikes, and it shows in the number of people riding (bikes), the bike paths ... and you've got some world-class events, like El Tour de Tucson," Clarke said Wednesday.

He said the local effort to encourage greater use of bicycles as a mode of transportation, especially for commuting to and from work, impressed the experts who examined applications from 80 cities nationwide that applied for the Bicycle Friendly Community designation. The program is administered locally by the Pima Association of Governments.

About 3 percent of all travel around Tucson is by bicycle, and 2.2 percent of Tucsonans ride a bicycle to work, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

"That's still relatively small, but it's five times the national average," Clarke said. "That's an indication that the polices are working."

By comparison, 10 percent of all travel in Boulder is by bicycle, and nearly 7 percent of residents view bicycling as their primary mode of travelto work, according to the League.

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©The Arizona Daily Star, 2004