The League of American Bicyclists has designated Fayetteville a gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community, the first in Arkansas.
“The city of Fayetteville is honored to be the highest-ranking Bicycle Friendly Community in Arkansas,” Mayor Lioneld Jordan said. “This is a reflection of our community’s commitment to accessibility, equity and more sustainable practices, as well as our staff’s vision and hard work to create an extensive network of trails for both transportation and recreation.”
The League’s Bicycle Friendly America program sets the standard for how communities build and benchmark progress toward improving cycling within communities. The designation is awarded to communities based on assessments across five key categories: equity, engineering, education, encouragement and evaluation and planning.
The gold-level award recognizes Fayetteville’s commitment to improving conditions for all people who bike through investments in bike education programs, regular bike events that promote and encourage people to choose biking, pro-bike policies and bike infrastructure.
Other Arkansas communities recognized by the League as bike friendly are: Benton and Washington counties, silver; Bentonville, Springdale, Conway, North Little Rock, Rogers and Little Rock, bronze.
The League also recognizes 61 businesses all across the state as bicycle friendly and four bike-friendly colleges and universities: the University of Central Arkansas, Hendrix College, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and Arkansas State University.
Visit bikeleague.org/bfa to see a complete list of award winners.