Missouri Bicycling, Walking, Running, and Trails News

Last week the League of American Bicyclists announced the latest round of Bicycle Friendly Community awards.

Missouri highlights:

• St. Joseph - Honorable Mention (new Missouri community in the BFC program)
• Lee's Summit - Bronze (continuing city; previous level: Bronze)
• Kansas City - Bronze (continuing city; previous level: Bronze)

The League's report cards for each city, below, give a good summary of where each city stands in comparison with other similar cities across the U.S. and what each city needs to do to move up to the next level.

Bicycle Friendly Communities in Missouri - current status

Currently Missouri has 10 communities in the Bicycle Friendly Communities program, including 1 at Silver level, 6 Bronze, and 3 Honorable Mention.

1.4 million Missourians live in a community recognized under the Bicycle Friendly Communities program.

This compares with 0 communities and 0 Missourians in the BFC program in 2008.

File: 

bfc_fall_2016_reportcard_st_joseph_mo.pdf

bfc_fall_2016_reportcard_lees_summit_mo.pdf

bfc_fall_2016_reportcard_kansas_city_mo.pdf

One of the most important initiatives up for a vote in Missouri Tuesday involves an issue that is important to everyone in Missouri who walks, hikes, bicycles, or enjoys the outdoors: Amendment 1, to renew the existing tax that supports Missouri's State Parks, soils, and water.

Half of the tax goes to support our state parks, including the Katy Trail, the Rock Island Trail, and over 1000 miles of trails in state parks in every part of Missouri.

The other half goes to soil and water preservation measure that are important to everyone who enjoys the Missouri outdoors--and to our state's farmers and agricultural lands.

This tax provides the primary form of support for our state parks and trails operated by Missouri State Parks like the Katy and Rock Island. If this funding vanishes, our state parks and trails will be in real trouble.

This tax has been in place since 1983 years and is a 1/10 percent sales tax--or 1 cent on every $10 purchase you make.  The tax must be renewed every 10 years.

Carthage, Missouri, is in the process of adding about 24 miles of marked on-street bicycle lanes and routes this summer. A city of just 14,200, Carthage looks to have the most on-street bicycle routes per capita of any Missouri City, once the project is complete. 

The Carthage bicycle route system brings good, marked, on-street bicycle routes within easy bicycling distance of nearly every residence and business in the city.

Creating a comprehensive on-street bicycle route system is one of our top recommendations for Missouri cities. On-street bicycle facilities re-purpose existing road space to create a safe enviroment for bicycling. Because streets already go everywhere in the city, an on-street bicycle route system is the best way to reach all citizens throughout a city.

Because cities already have many miles of existing roads and streets--many of those miles very underused--creating an on-street bicycle route system is typically very inexpensive.

File: 

carthage-mo-bicycle-route-map-plan-2016-09.pdf

In a surprise move yesterday, Governor Nixon has restricted the entire $20 million in funding from the new Missouri Moves cost share funding.

Missouri Moves, passed by the Missouri General Assembly this spring, is the first state transportation funding in Missouri history to take the "total transportation" approach, which makes funding available for transit, walking, and bicycling alongside of road and highway projects.

MoDOT has already solicited and received applications for the funding, which was to be distributed as a local cost share program. In the applications that were submitted, local cities and counties were offering to provide 50-80% of the total cost of the projects.

MoDOT indicated that approximately 50% of the funding applications submitted were for multimodal projects, with many bicycle, pedestrian, and transit projects in the mix. MoDOT reserved 1/3 of the total funding for multimodal and bike/ped projects.

In addition to the projects submitted specifically for the multi-modal/bike/ped funding, many of the projects submitted for the 2/3 of the funding reserved for road and highway projects also included bicycle and pedestrian elements.

Recently, one of our members asked us about a situation where a local police officer had directed him to leave the street and bicycle on the adjacent sidewalk.

Unfortunately, this situation happens occasionally in Missouri. With hundreds of cities and counties and thousands of law enforcement officers, not all of them are as well versed in bicycle law and best practice as they should be. So we do get reports of police officers asking or ordering bicyclists on a busier street and move to the sidewalk instead.

Thankfully, this is a rare occurence in Missouri--and becoming rarer, as bicycling becomes more popular and accepted.

But just to set the record straight, we want to say as clearly as we can: