How did Springfield not make this list of America’s top 10 bicycling cities?
Here’s what we have going for us:
Largely flat terrain: Getting around town is not a struggle physically.
Grid street system: You have choices getting from point A to point B, including long stretches of quiet, residential streets.
Marked bicycle routes: Traffic engineers have determined these streets to be easily negotiated by novice bicyclists. Here’s the route map.
Narrow, low-speed, urban core streets: The greater downtown area is a grid of 20-mph streets with widths that encourage bicyclists to control the lane.
Plenty of bicycle parking in the urban core: The city has done an excellent job providing U-racks at popular destinations, including the bicycle corral at Walnut and South.
Need help; we got help: The Star Team of Ozark Greenways published the Drive Less, Live More booklet a few years ago. The new edition, entitled Bike Smart Springfield, will be published this spring. It has lots of advice on bicycling in traffic.
Bicycle education: We have three League Cycling Instructors and one CyclingSavvy Instructor in Springfield who, combined, offer about three traffic bicycling classes per year. We want to increase this.
Police education: PedNet, in Columbia, held a traffic bicycling training class for the Springfield Police Department. The department will now be able to incorporate this modual into its regular officer training.
Programming: If you like group rides and races, we have them. Plus, Bike Bus Walk to Work Week is an annual celebration of alternative transportation.
Miles and miles of greenways: These trails are great for recreational riding.
The LINK: Once this complete streets project is finished, Springfield will have a multimodal corridor that will link the greeways north to south.
Great bicycle shops: No matter where you live, there’s a bicycle shop close to you in Springfield. Check the sidebar for links.
The STAR Team: Our local bicycle-pedestrain advocacy group works hard to keep alternative transportation issues on the forefront of civic concerns.
Bicycle bloggers: Check the sidebar on Carbon Trace 
That’s not an exhaustive list
Get out there and ride like you mean it!
Comments 9
Those are all big cities. Is Springfield off their radar?
We were in Austin in 2009 when UT offered me a job and we were deciding whether to move there. The roads and traffic were terrible. On our first or second day, my wife was walking from the B and B where we were staying to find the Whole Foods and a lady pedestrian was mowed down and killed by a car a couple blocks up the street; that unnerved her.
Austin works hard to make it bikeable, but compared to little Los Alamos, the place was Bike Hell. Its a big, sprawling city surrounded by suburbs and dissected by huge boulevards and interstates and Car is definitely King. I think Albuquerque is less intimidating, but then when you live in a place, you get used to dealing with it. My first week in Honolulu was freaky; by my last year or two, it was a cycling paradise to me, even Nimitz Highway!
To each his own opinion, I guess. Bicycling is so nice here that you can’t get anyone to join an advocacy group. Everyone who wants to be on a bike is out riding.
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 7:58 am ¶I think Khal pegged it – isn’t Springfield near Midwestern State University (MSU)?
As for the objective Springfield items, most of them also apply to large areas of the urban core in both Dallas and Fort Worth; either of which really ARE major cities. In the case of the major natural barrier in Fort Worth, there are 30+ miles of multimodal trails along that barrier – the Trinity River.
Perhaps Buycycling Magazine will name Springfield as one of the “worst” as well, and we can both nod and wink.
Seriously, one should not take these puff pieces as meaning much of anything.
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 10:17 am ¶Andy, I love your enthusiasm. While you are wondering why Springfield isn’t one of the top bicycling cities, I’ll wonder why Missouri State isn’t in the Final Four.
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 11:53 am ¶I’m not really wondering. It’s plain to see if you look at what was written about those other cities. It seems one thing is important above all others — something I didn’t mention about Springfield
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 2:36 pm ¶Bike share?
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 4:32 pm ¶Like Robert, I too will plump for cycle mode share, with a side order of non-hostile infrastructure.
Flat terrain is nice, but Switzerland is not a particularly flat country. Yet the Swiss have some of the highest cycle mode shares with Basel and Berne having 25% and 20% cycle mode shares. Having been in both cities, I can attest that they are definitely not flat!
A grid road system is nice, yet Osaka in Japan has a road system that falls into the category of “random” or perhaps “chaotic” and yet has a 25% cycle mode share.
All cycling cities have two basic items in common. The first is proper infrastructure that makes cycling the fastest, easiest and most convenient way of reliably getting from A to B for most trips. The second is a police force and court system that promptly arrests and jails dangerous car drivers for lengthy prison terms.
Since Springfield falls somewhat short in both areas, it is not surprising that it is not on the list.
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 8:12 pm ¶What’s missing: Bicycle lanes. That’s the common denominator in all of those top 10 as described in the article I linked. It’s the thing above all others that the League cares about.
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 10:50 pm ¶Maybe I missed it,but is not clear to me that LAB was even involved in this piece. Is this the Huffington’s own two cents?
Posted 01 Apr 2012 at 8:43 am ¶Khal… I’m not claiming the LAB had anything to do with it.
Posted 01 Apr 2012 at 2:31 pm ¶