Cycling Club Seeking Bike-friendly Status for Winona Lake, Warsaw
Posted
Jennifer Peryam-jperyam@timesuniononline.com
Kosciusko Velo Cycling Club is working to apply for Warsaw and Winona Lake to obtain Bicycle Friendly Status through the League of American Bicyclists.
Currently, there are five areas in Indiana that have the status including Carmel, Indianapolis, Bloomington, Goshen and South Bend.
The organization began the process last spring to apply for the status and will submit the application Feb. 15 to the League of American Bicyclists.
Last spring, KCV partnered with Bicycle Indiana, the Indiana State Department of Health and the K21 Foundation to hold a seminar in Warsaw to see what sort of local support there was to pursue the status, according to Fred Helfrich, Kosciusko Velo Cycling Club advocacy chairman.
The cycling club is working on an application and bicycle master plan to obtain the status.
Helfrich said the goal of a Bicycle Friends Community is to provide dedicated areas for safe bike and pedestrian routes.
The club is currently working to form a bicycle committee, identify streets for cycling routes and where lanes should be created for Bicyclists.
The club will hold a public meeting Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. at Mad Anthony’s, Warsaw, to review the application form to submit to the League of American Bicyclist.
If the status is not obtained, the group plans to again apply in July for the status.
The cycling group is in the process of completing the application and identified areas where it falls short of the bicycle friendly status.
Helfrich said the status will allow the city and town to market itself as being accommodating to bicyclists and pedestrians.
Bicycle Friendly Community requirements include engineering regarding what has been built to promote cycling in the community.
Other criteria are education on programs teaching cyclists to ride safely and motorists to share the road safely with cyclists, and encouragement concentrating on how the community promotes and encourages bicycling.
Another aspect is enforcement in measuring the connections between the cycling and law enforcement communities, and evaluation and planning to evaluate current bicycle programs.
The group is identifying hurdles to obtain the status.
Some of the hurdles are identifying a bicycle advisory committee, developing a complete streets policy to accommodate Bicyclists, education in the schools of bicycle safety as well as cyclist and motorist education, and enforcement of bicycle safety by law enforcement.
