Draft map and numbering system
Probably the single most important project for bicycle travel in the United States is the U.S. Bicycle Route System.
The proposed 50,000-mile national network links the lower 48 states with numbered corridors running north-south and east-west.
The Adventure Cycling Association and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials worked together to identify those 50-mile wide corridors nearly 2 years ago. But it's up to the individual states to work together to create the on-the-ground bike routes that meet up at state borders.
And that's the problem.
Uneven interest
Some states are charging ahead to pick bicycle routes to implement the plan. Others are lagging far behind or show no interest at all.
Many of the bicycle routes now in place, many created by Adventure Cycling, were created to avoid metropolitan areas. They're touring routes that put bicycle travelers on low-traffic roads. When we bicycled cross-country in 1984, the biggest city we visited was Pueblo, Colorado.
The U.S. Bicycle Route System is different. It's meant to serve rural, suburban and urban areas. If you want to travel by bicycle from Cincinnati to Albuquerque, there are routes that will take you there.
And that, of course, is why all the states need to participate to make this thing work.
Early implementers
The US Bicycle Route System coordinator at Adventure Cycling is Ginny Sullivan. She's on the road right now to drum up more support for the plan and help states work out some details. She appeared at a get-together hosted by BikePortland this week (see the video) and will be working with Washington state officials next week.
Ginny gives this update on states that are making progress for the US Bike System at an Adventure Cycling blog post:
“Who will be the early implementers? Florida and Georgia are working very hard in a joint effort. California is moving forward. I am meeting with Washington state next week! Michigan is defining two routes with two different volunteer efforts and Wisconsin is active as well. Then there's Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, North Dakota, Oregon, and others that are in some stage of effort. More states I haven't had a chance to actively work with yet include Tennessee, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Indiana and Virginia, though I have made contact with many of them.”
State survey
Last October, Adventure Cycling surveyed the states to determine who was on board. Only 38 states answered the survey; of them, 32 states expressed an interest in developing routes for the network.
Available staff and funding were cited most often as impediments to participating. Here are the states that either are not interested in participating or couldn't get it together to return the survey:
Not interested:
Connecticut (Now interested)
Montana (Adventure Cycling's home state!)
South Carolina
Did not respond:
Alabama
Alaska
Delaware
Florida (working on a plan)
Hawaii
Idaho
Kansas
North Carolina
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
Ohio
Oklahoma
Texas
Washington DC
Wisconsin (working on a plan)
It's going to be difficult to create a nationwide bicycle route network without these states. Look at a map; how do you create an east-west route without Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Talk about detours…! (Randy Rasa takes his state's bike-ped coordinator to task at the Kansas Cyclist blog.)
We're hoping that they're interested, but just never got around to answering their mail.
Volunteer/More information
One of the cool things about this is the opportunity for volunteers to help. As she mentioned in her blog post, volunteers are helping to find the best routes in Michigan on routes 20 and 35. Volunteer opportunities are available in others states as well.
Adventure Cycling has made a forum available if you want to volunteer or learn more about the US Bicycle Route System. There's also a US Bicycle Route System Facebook page with 2,800 fans and growing.
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