Salem Still Scores Poorly in People for Bikes City Ratings

The annual City Rating from People for Bikes is out, and Salem still rates pretty poorly, though perhaps with a tick upwards.

Rating summary

Last year Salem received a numerical rating of 17/100 and was in the 35th percentile overall. We've moved up to 48th percentile! The rating itself of 17 or 23 is surely within a margin of error, though. 

They included chart of seven years of scoring, but also included a weird set of comparables. It would be better to see mid-sized cities in Oregon.

Ratings history (in blue)

All four cities moved up, and it would be interesting to know if the increase is more in a change to the algorithm than real change in Salem and the other cities.

The only significant change I can really think of is the segment of new bike lane on Union Street.

Analysis detail

An important part of the rating, highlighted above in the chart of comparables, is "adjustments to speed limits." 

Salem Continues to Rank Poorly in Latest People for Bikes Rating

Ooof! The new People for Bikes "city ratings" are out, and Salem looks pretty bad.

With a numerical rating of 17/100, Salem is in the 35th percentile overall, and in the 28th percentile among mid-sized peer cities.

That's bad - People for Bikes

The combination of old school, paint-only lanes on busy streets and very few improved low-traffic bikeways together makes for a high-stress network.

We've hardly improved on the conditions the Sustainable Cities Initiative identified over a decade ago.

Anticipated "Level of Stress" analysis (2010/2011)

The current People for Bikes network analysis is substantially identical to this. The new streets at Fairview are the most substantial addition, though until any commercial hub is built, residents of Fairview remain pretty distant from destinations, and must go on zoomy stroads to reach meaningful places.

City Fun Fact Misses Key Points

Is it worth criticizing a "fun fact," an element of whimsy in social media and public relations?

via Twitter

Yes, after going back and forth on it, I think it is. Because this is symptomatic of a great part of the problem and sheds more light than really was intended.

Lots of gravel and debris in the bike lane
on Front Street between State and Commercial

A couple of day ago while walking out of Minto Park on Front Street along Park Front and the rest of the Boise project, an adult man with all the bike gear crowded me on the sidewalk. It wasn't a zoomingly rude pass, it wasn't scorching, but it wasn't a generous pass, either. He was claiming his space on the sidewalk and I, on foot, was in the way. I pointed to the bike lane on Front Street (pictured), and he said something like "it's tough to bike in the street."

Places for Bikes City Ratings Ranks Salem Low Again

This morning Places for Bikes released their new City Rankings, and Salem stayed the same.

No surprise: Not so good (full scorecard)

Last year we were at 1.5 stars. This year we are also at 1.5 stars.

Interestingly, Eugene jumped from 1.9 to 3.4 stars.

Eugene makes a big jump this year, led by "acceleration"

This probably reflects some changes in formula and methodology, but it also reflects the "acceleration" assessment, which jumped from 0.6 to 3.8.

That seems like a little bit of overcorrection. It's not clear that things in Eugene have changed that much in one year.

So there's still a sense in which this is an evolving set of metrics, and further iterations will continue to refine it.

At the same time, the big picture is correct: Salem's not doing a very good job.

We are not meeting our targets (Our Salem)

There are some recommendations in the report and these might be interesting to visit in more detail later in another post.

Salem Falls out of Bicycling Magazine Top 50 Ratings

Salem fell off the list - via Twitter

Bicycling Magazine today published their list of the top 50 cities for bicycling, and Salem fell off of it.

Salem has declined steadily in the ratings over the last decade:

• 19th in 2010
• 22nd in 2012
• 38th in 2014
• 47th in 2016

Portland has declined also, to sit at #5, and Eugene climbed from #18 to sit at #7.

About Portland they say

In fact, since we last put out this guide two years ago, Portland has only built 5.2 miles of protected lanes. Seattle and San Francisco built 15 and 18 miles respectively in in that same period.

For Eugene they focused on younger students:

While most cities have some sort of safe routes to school program, Eugene is taking the recruitment of kid cyclists very seriously. “We have three full-time safe routes school coordinators,” he says, adding that there are five roving fleets of bikes that are passed from school to school so every fifth- and sixth-grade student in the area learns how to ride.

If Eugene is #7, that's also a comment on how bad things are. Ridership there has eroded a great deal in the last decade, and you'd think a top 10 city would show ridership increases. Overall the infrastructure still coasts on projects from the 1970s and 80s, and is still catching up to 21st century best practices.

In any case, Salem's previous spots in the top 50 were probably overstated, but the trend is on point: Relative to other cities, Salem is falling behind and only weakly dedicated to improving riding conditions. New facilities like the Minto Bridge and Geer Park are great, but they are not fully connected into a comprehensive system of bike transport. Just getting the Winter-Maple Greenway completed is a slog, and there is no plan yet for a successor, second Greenway. The Union Street bikeway/greenway/whateverway remains fragmentary; while its funding is in place, construction and completion is a few years off. Salem also did not renew their LAB Bicycle-Friendly Community rating.

On discrete projects some cheerleading is plausible, but overall the system is not keeping pace.

Addendum, October 11th

The City's published their "First-Ever Annual Community Report"on the Strategic Plan.

via Twitter

The City features this sweet image of a child learning to bicycle.

Over at Hinessight they note

I searched the report for every mention of "bicycle." There was exactly one. Here it is. LED lamps provide good lighting for bicycles, along with cars and pedestrians. Whoopee.

There's a disconnect here between image and reality.

1.5 out of 5 Stars: Places for Bikes New Ratings

Last night Places for Bikes announced their latest city ratings for 480 American cities.

1.5 out of 5 stars for Salem

As in the first iteration, Salem didn't do so well. Salem scores 1.5 out of 5 stars:

• 1.7 on ridership - how often and how many people ride
• 2.1 on safety
• 1.4 on the bike network of low-stress routes (not old-school bike lanes on busy streets)
• 1.8 on reach - how consistently the network reaches everyone in the community
• 0.5 on acceleration - how quickly we are improving the network and adding new riders

It's not surprising to see the low mark in acceleration. That contests directly any claim that we currently have "balance" in our system for people who want to bike.

Bike commuting Flat in 2016

There are some new census numbers on commuting coming out, and in our era of cheap gas, they are not good.

At 1.3%, Salem's at the top of p.2

Several cities actually show declines. As far as I can tell, Salem's rate remains unchanged, fluttering historically around that 1% to 1.5% level, within the error bars for any assessment.

For bigger cities there is more hand-wringing:

• At People for bikes: "Bike commute growth has leveled off - but some cities still show the way"
• At BikePortland: "Bike commuting growth slips and Portland adds 11,000 more commutes by car"

Here the lesson surely is that if we want to see fewer drive-alone trips, we are going to have to dig in more and make more of an effort. Mostly we're adding doilies and trinkets and bikey bric-a-brac on the margins, not making determined structural and systemic efforts to make walking, biking, and busing more convenient and more attractive and less costly than drive-alone trips, especially for short trips.

Our Metropolitan Planning Organization has said

The SKATS MPO -- along with our local jurisdictions and ODOT -- invests in a balance of travel modes: auto, transit, bicycle and pedestrian projects.

And 1.3% is the resulting "balance."

That's not balance. That's tokenism.

Places for Bikes Network Analysis Shows Salem in a Bad Place

Places for Bikes (formerly People for Bikes) just rolled out their Bike Network Analysis, and even the Platinum don't always do very well!

This is something of a competing rating for the League of American Bicyclists Bicycle-Friendly Community assessment. As I understand it, a major industry funder of advocacy, Trek Bicycles, pulled funding from the LAB and instead allocated it to Places for Bikes. So there are industry politics in play here also. Finally, obviously it is a work in progress, a first iteration, and will certainly grow and be modified. There will be useful criticisms of it and refinements for it.

Still, the analysis is very interesting. And as it competes with, or is complementary to, the LAB's rating, it could shed light on important new factors in making for inviting and comfortable city bicycling.

Here's a brief note on method:

The Bike Network Analysis (BNA) score is an evolving project to measure how well bike networks connect people with the places they want to go. Because most people are interested in biking only when it's a low-stress option, our maps recognize only low-stress biking connections.

We compute the score over four steps: data collection, traffic stress, destination access, and score aggregation

So things to note about it:

1. Focus is on inviting future or infrequent bicyclists, not serving those who are confident and already bike regularly. Historically the LAB has had a bias for "vehicular cycling," a philosophy that bike should act like cars and be in the regular flow of traffic with cars. This approach skews towards confident men and has shown to be of very limited appeal.
2. Land use, short trips, and meaningful adjacencies count. Can you run your errands and commute easily by bike?

Because Salem's network is almost totally through bike lanes on busy streets, and we lack a low-stress network, we score very poorly. But so does Eugene, and Portland's low-stress network isn't as big as you might expect.

Salem Falls again in Bicycling Magazine Rankings, from 38th to 47th

The good news is Bicycling Magazine still ranks Salem in the top 50 cities for bicycling. The bad news is we continue to fall in the rankings relative to other cities. This year we are 47th.

From #19 in 2010 to #38 in 2014

Salem's ranking has traced a steady downward arc, going from #19 in 2010, to #22 in 2012, to #38 in 2014.

It's also a little hard to square a top 50 ranking with "miles of bike lanes in Salem...woefully inadequate."

Your mileage may vary - but the high level observation remains true: By national standards Salem is pretty good, but by absolute or international standards, Salem still rates poorly.

The LAB renewal will come out soon - Keizer you may have heard submitted an application! - and it will be interesting to see how our "bronze" fares in that round of evaluation.

Both Eugene and Portland ranked higher than Salem on the Bicycling Magazine ratings - but not Corvallis, Ashland, Beaverton, or Bend, each of which is rated "silver" or "gold" by the LAB. Those are interesting omissions, though they may have missed a cut based on population size.

Also interesting in the piece:

In addition to its work on a greenway network, in 2016, Salem will strip its first buffered bike lanes on two downtown streets, and launch a bike share system in 2017.

Bike share in Salem next year? Hmmm....

Also not quite sure about the geographic accuracy here:

On the 132-mile Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway you’ll pedal alongside the Cascade Mountains and the Coast Range, through the Cubanisimo Vineyard, which produces some of the best Pinot Noir in the country, and amidst the refreshing fragrances of pink and purple wildflowers. Make a pit stop in Salem, about 30 miles into the Bikeway, for shortcake topped with local berries at the E.Z. Orchards Farm Market.

These are puff pieces, and maybe it is unrealistic to expect close-to-the-ground detail.

But even if you still want to celebrate Salem's top 50 standing, it is also important to note that we are losing ground relative to other cities, who seem more eager to give bike transport and bike recreation a bigger portion of the transportation mix.

Salem's Bronze Bicycle-Friendly Rating Up for Renewal in 2016

Whom does our Bronze rating actually serve?
(via MassDOT Separated Bike Lane Planning Guide)

A deadline for the League of American Bicyclists "Bicycle Friendly Community" renewal is next month on February the 11th. I believe this year marks Salem's four-year renewal cycle - though we may be on the August submission rather than the February deadline. We were rated in the fall of 2008 and 2012, and 2016 marks another four years.

So where are we?

The assessment is really bifocal. On the one hand, by national standards and in the near focus, Salem remains a relatively good place to bike. There are tons of communities out there that lack a basic network of sidewalks and bike lanes, has never heard of a sharrow, lacks any interest in things like the Union St. RR Bridge and the Courtney Minto Bridge, and doesn't even try to pay lip service to any notions of "balance" and "multi-modal" planning.

By these standards it would be surprising for Salem to lose Bronze, I think. By these standards Salem does a good job. Not a Silver, Gold, or Platinum job, but a Bronze job, an effort of very real, though minor, distinction.

But on the other hand, by absolute standards and looking out farther, by the extent to which we measure up to our ideals and goals, I would say we're mired in a pretty lousy state.

Salem's commitment to 1980s style bike lanes on busy streets rated as arterials and collectors means our network really only serves the "experienced and confident." That hunched over, almost certainly male, rider on the far right of the typology at top.

(An actual designer would manage the diagramming mash-up, but you get the idea: Our "Bronze" serves only one end of the spectrum.) 

The network intermittently serves some of the "casual and somewhat confident," and pretty much utterly fails the "interested but concerned." They're stuck doing loops out at Minto Park and annoying the bird watchers and dog walkers. In an important way, our failure on the streets exacerbates user conflicts in the parks.

We're still working on a real Bicycle Boulevard in the Winter-Maple project, we're hoping for a real buffered bike lane on South Commercial in the Commercial-Vista project, we're still working on access to the Union St Railroad Bridge at the difficult crossings of Commercial and Wallace, and so on.

As far as specific recommendations from 2008 and 2012 go, we have made real progress on few of them. So there aren't grounds for an upgrade there, either.

(The LAB also has a few areas of emphasis that we might also disagree with some.)

So it would be nice to maintain our "Bronze" rating, but it also no longer seems like anything worth crowing about. It's nice, but not super relevant. It's a pleasant afterthought rather than mark of core commitment. As a "carrot," whose aim is to encourage a greater civic commitment to bike transport, doesn't seem to lead to much more than the default conditions. So, we'll see how it turns out this fall.

Oregon Falls to No.6 in National Rankings

ANNOUNCING: 2015 Bicycle Friendly State ranking! How does your state rank? http://t.co/RYvXnSGboS pic.twitter.com/ewGXpVZEty

— Bike League (@BikeLeague) May 11, 2015

—> Utah and Massachusetts jump past Oregon in bike-friendly state rankings http://t.co/jAJKJS97WI pic.twitter.com/QmCagUXLiA

— Jonathan Maus (@BikePortland) May 11, 2015

Here are the recommendations for Oregon from the LAB:

• Repeal the state’s mandatory bike lane law. These types of laws ignore the quality and safety of available bike lanes.
• Adopt performance measures, such as mode shift or a low percentage of exempted projects, to better track and support Complete Streets/Bike Accommodation Policy compliance.
• Publicly disclose compliance with Oregon’s landmark Bicycle Bill, ORS 366.514, on every highway, road or street being constructed, reconstructed or relocated.
• Update your state bicycle master plan. The plan update should evaluate and build on the previous bicycle master plan, and reflect changes in bicycle user needs.
• Adopt a comprehensive Vision Zero policy to help Oregon reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities.
• Increase the amount of state funding dedicated to bicycle and pedestrian projects from 1% of state transportation trust funds to at least 2%.
• Adopt a mode share goal for biking to encourage the integration of bicycle transportation needs into all transportation and land use policy and project decisions.
• Officially endorse the NACTO Urban Streets and Bikeway Design Guide, incorporate its designs into state engineering and design manuals, and encourage its use on the state highway network in urban areas, including collector and arterial roadways.
• Adopt performance measures to decrease bicycle fatalities.
• Consider ways to promote strategic sidewalk and bikeway infill priorities through planning activities grant programs, or funding programs.

Lots of good stuff here. (I think there is already a project to update the State bike plan, it should be noted.)

The Oregonian: "Tragic Accident"

If you wanted a snapshot for why Oregon is languishing and places like Utah are rising, well, the Oregonian recently editorialized about a crash:

The light was red, but the 68-year-old former commercial truck driver said he thought it was green and didn't stop. Seconds later, his pickup, traveling at 40 miles per hour, barreled into a woman and her three children on their way home from getting ice cream. They were crossing the street in a crosswalk.

The deaths of three children on an urban highway optimized for lawful 40mph auto travel is "just a tragic accident":

But ultimately, you can't prosecute away risk or engineer safety in a way that overcomes the inevitable boneheaded mistakes that people make, even when their full attention should be on the deadly weapon they are piloting down the street. And that brings up the problem at the heart of this: There is no judgment or punishment that makes up for the brutal deaths of three kids walking home with their ice cream. [italics added]

By contrast, here's what a city in Utah is doing to "engineer safety":

Salt Lake City to install the nation's first protected intersection for cyclists http://t.co/cw26IK5KOn Big deal! pic.twitter.com/fnatTWNTaY

— Streetsblog Network (@StreetsblogNet) May 6, 2015

New Bicycling Magazine Rankings: Salem Falls from 22 to 38

From #19 in 2010 to #38 in 2014

Though it's been discussed for a couple of weeks here and there, the new city ratings by Bicycling Magazine are finally posted to the web.

Salem has gone from #19 in 2010, to #22 in 2012, all the way down to #38 in 2014.

Portland's fretting because it fell from #1 to #4.

As objective ratings, I don't know how useful these are. By national standards it's true, Salem's a pretty good place to ride. I think our "bronze" LAB rating is a good way of thinking about things.

But there's so much more to be done. Very few would say it's "easy" to bike around Salem or that a parent could with confidence send their child anywhere in town by bike. With bike lanes on busy arterials, Salem functions in a basic way for "strong and fearless" types, but is woefully lacking for folks who bike occasionally and want low-stress routes.

So the fall, the relative change, down from #19 to #38 is meaningful.  Bike counts showed a plateauing of ridership, and even Portland now is showing signs of a plateau. The news of a decline at Portland State University is concerning.

Since the Union Street Railroad Bridge was opened in 2009, there has been no new major bike facility in Salem. Sure, we got a few sharrows, the road bond widened some roads and added sidewalks and bike lanes in addition to center turn lanes, but there's no new complete bikeway or downtown protected bike lane or other 21st century facility. It's all vintage 1980s style here!

Other cities have constructed innovative new facilities, and they're leap-frogging us.

Salem will continue to decline until we build better facilities, complete the gaps in our existing routes, and finally start to tame our excessive attachments to carspace by curbing things like free parking and high speed limits.

Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community Feedback in 2008 and 2012

You may recall that in September of 2008, Salem was named a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists.

Renewal is every four years, and a couple months ago Salem maintained its bronze level citation.

I thought a comparison of the two sets of feedback might be interesting, but where I hoped for incisive commentary, there is instead cheerfully bland encouragement.

Comments are organized around the "five Es": Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, and Evaluation & Planning. In Salem's bronze citation of 2008 we were awarded marks for Engineering and Encouragement.

Plainly the city (both City of Salem proper and the community collectively) has made progress on some of them, has perhaps retreated on a couple (most notably in the dwindling Bike Safety Education program for kids), and probably just maintained the status quo on the bulk of them.

Here's the feedback from 2008:

Night Striping, the Bronze, KMUZ: Friday Newsbits

Perhaps with a break in the rain, it was possible to return to road striping, and here's some action on the RR crossing at Chemeketa & 12th. You can see the curve of the turn-around now. I was hoping to see them put down the bike symbol or sharrow or whatever they're going to use for the new bike crossing.

Here's the paint truck, with the big reservoirs of yellow and white paint!

Bronze Renewal

In this corner of the world, the City has nothing better to do than write press releases about bicycling awards, right?!

Yesterday they finally came out with last week's news and it's in the paper today. Check out Director of Public Works Peter Fernandez' quote at the end (which unfortunately the paper didn't include). I don't remember him commenting in 2008 on it! Even in a press release it was great to see.

City of Salem Named Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community - 10/25/12

The League of American Bicyclists has announced the latest round of Bicycle Friendly Communities (BFC) and Salem has been named a Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community. This award is presented only to communities with remarkable commitments to bicycling. Since its inception, more than 500 distinct communities have applied for the designation. The five levels of the award are diamond, platinum, gold, silver, and bronze. With this impressive round, there are now 242 BFCs in 47 states across America. The Bronze BFC award recognizes Salem's commitment to improving conditions for bicycling through investment in bicycling promotion, education programs, infrastructure, and pro-bicycling policies.

The decision to designate Salem a Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community involved careful review of the City's application, supplemental materials, and consultation with local cyclists. Salem will be featured with a profile on the League of American Bicyclists website at http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bicyclefriendlyamerica/.

"We are excited that Salem recognizes that simple steps to make biking safe and comfortable pay huge dividends in civic, community, and economic development," said League President Andy Clarke. "Bicycling is more than a practical, cost-effective solution to many municipal challenges - it's a way to make Salem a place where people do not just live and work, but thrive."

The BFC program is aimed at helping communities evaluate their quality of life, sustainability, and transportation networks, while allowing them to benchmark their progress toward improving their bicycle friendliness.

Peter Fernandez, P.E., Public Works Director, states "We are proud of the pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure investments we have made over the years. We hope to make many more in the future."

Map Charts Bicycling's Decline in Salem - Salem Remains Bronze (Updated)

Bike to Work: Governing Magazine

Awesome map showing change in % of bike commuters. That big red dot in Oregon? That's #SalemOR h/t @mapbox governing.com/gov-data/bicyc…
— Chris Hagan (@chrishagan) October 18, 2012

The change is very close to the margin of error, but still...even if we appeal to style and the culture of bicycling in Salem, in raw numbers it is difficult to conclude that things are getting better. If the City wants to improve bicycling in Salem, it needs to do more. (See note on the walking map here.)

Write Citycouncil@cityofsalem.net and let Councilors know that Salem is falling behind!

Update

The League of American Bicyclists announced today the fall round of Bicycle Friendly Communities. Salem maintained the bronze - but unlike other communities in Oregon, it failed to upgrade.

Is Salem still a Bronze Bicycle-Friendly Community?

A couple of days ago the League of American Bicyclists announced a new level in the Bicycle Friendly Community program.   Cities that are now rated Platinum will have a Diamond level to chase.   The Portland Bicycle Transportation Alliance and BikePortland weighed in.

The timing of the announcement looks like it prepares the way for the fall round of Bicycle Friendly Community announcements.  Salem's turn for re-certification is in this round, and it will be interesting to see how we fare.

On the one hand, after the Union Street Railroad Bridge and the initial pilot of sharrows on Commercial, Chemeketa, and Rosemount, the City has done nothing substantial.  It's all about legacy remediation: Bikelanes and sidewalks in the context of road expansion.  So you get busier, less comfortable streets, but you do get a bike lane.  Not sure how much of a win that is.  Definitely not a win, many intersections are being widened, and dual turn lanes added.  So in many places things are getting worse for non-auto travel.  Over on facebook, it was observed that "over the last 15 years Salem has gone from 1.7% bike mode share to 1.6%."  The manual bike counts from 2008-2011 (we didn't do them this year) haven't shown city-wide increases, either.

(Here are year-end reviews from 2009, 2010, 2011.)

So based on results, for the Engineering and Encouragement side, the City is not doing very well.

But you know, there are some "green shoots."  Style!  This summer there were lots of new kinds of bikes around, a diversity new to Salem. You saw the way Franklin's Bottle Shop welcomed bikes inside.  Upright Cyclist is devoted plain-clothes, everyday utility cycling.

Earlier this summer, there was a a big-box, department store "fixie," a Thruster, locked up at a store on Lancaster, not far from the store that sells it.

A single-speed on Lancaster!

Salem Ranks 22nd in Latest Bicycling Magazine Best

Bicycling Magazine's annual rankings have come out, and Salem takes the 22nd spot. Portland is #1, Eugene is #9, and Salem fell down from #19 the year before. (Corvallis's population fell below the cut-off, otherwise they'd surely be on the list.)

But it's a parlor game. It's nice to see, of course. By national standards Salem is a good place to bike. But, man, there's still so much to do, and you can't take these things too seriously.

Bike League Bronze Recommendations: 3 Year Retrospective

You may recall that in September of 2008, Salem was named a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists.

Renewal is every four years, and at the end of year three, it seemed like a natural time to review the comments LAB staff offered.

Comments are organized around the "five Es": Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, and Evaluation & Planning. In Salem's bronze citation we were awarded marks for Engineering and Encouragement.

Plainly the city (both City of Salem proper and the community collectively) has made progress on some of them, has perhaps retreated on a couple (most notably in the dwindling Bike Safety Education program for kids), and probably just maintained the status quo on the bulk of them.

I might return to discuss some of these in more detail - but what jumps out to you? What do you think are the most important successes, failures, or omissions? What should Salem do in the next year specifically for renewal? (At this point I have a hard time imagining being able to jump to "silver" - but maybe it's possible?)

LAB Bicycle Friendly Community Feedback 2008
Here's a short version of the comments:

Engineering

• Hire full-time Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator
• Expand network connectivity through bike lanes, sharrows, signing, and low-traffic routes. Set targeted implementation rates.
• Conform to current best practices
• Adopt a complete streets policy
• Offer more training for city staff on bike facility design and planning.
• Increase amount of secure bike parking.

Education

• Create Community Bicycle Safety Campaign
• Insert bike and motorist education into local government and utility mailings
• Expand Bike Safety Ed for kids.
• Offer adult bicycle education.
• Create Safe Routes to Schools program.

Encouragement

• City sponsorship, events, and programming in bike month
• Create a Bike Ambassador program.
• Organize and promote city loop rides.
• Increase Mountain biking opportunities.

Enforcement

• Create stronger connections between people who bike and police officers.
• Schedule targeted "share the road" enforcement actions.

Evaluation/Planning

• Increase Bike Counts and establish Social Marketing for bike use.
• Deepen evaluation of Crash data and develop plan to decrease crashes.

LAB Names SAIF a Bicycle Friendly Business

Today at the National Bike Summit, the League of American Bicyclists announced SAIF Corporation was an honorable mention Bicycle Friendly Business. The League announced 55 other businesses as well as 20 universities with designations from bronze to platinum. Stanford University and New Belgium Brewing both attained platinum. The University of Oregon and Portland State University also attained silver.

SAIF is the first Salem-area business or university to be recognized.

SAIF is a not-for-profit, state-chartered public corporation created by an act of the Oregon legislature in 1913. Our income, earned exclusively from policyholder premiums and investment returns, pays our operating expenses and supports the financial health of the Industrial Accident Fund (the fund from which SAIF's operating expenses and claim costs are paid).

SAIF offers coverage to public and private employers in the state of Oregon and has nearly 48,000 policyholders who employ more than half a million Oregonians. Approximately one in three Oregon workers is employed by a SAIF-insured policyholder.

The recognition is part of SAIF's corporate social responsibility:

SAIF knows that being an industry leader means doing our best to tread lightly and not taking the environment for granted. We have adopted Governor Ted Kulongoski's aggressive goals for reduction of greenhouse gases, and we are working to reduce our carbon footprint along with other public agencies. By 2015, we plan to reduce our energy consumption to a level that is 20 percent below our consumption in the year 2000, as well as to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

SAIF has many campuses across the state, including locations in Salem, Portland, Bend, and Eugene.

The League says

The Bicycle Friendly Business (BFB) program recognizes employers’ efforts to encourage a more bicycle friendly atmosphere for employees and customers. The program honors innovative bike-friendly efforts and provides technical assistance and information to help companies and organizations become even better for bicyclists. This new initiative complements the League’s Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) program, which has been recognizing cities and towns for their bicycle friendliness since 2003.

Know a Bike Friendly Business or University?

Two years ago the League of American Bicyclists named Salem a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community.

Did you know the League also recognizes businesses and universities that show an exemplary commitment to bicycling?

The Bicycle Friendly Business program is a year or so old, and word is still getting out!

The state of Oregon currently has only 9 businesses so recognized. There's no company in Salem yet!

The League offers a quick check to see if you should apply.Here's the application site and a link to the forms. The application is FREE!

A brand new program, just announced this fall, is the Bicycle Friendly University.

The current application round for both programs closes in mid-January, 2011, with announcements in March, so there's plenty of time!