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This week, we announced the latest round of Bicycle Friendly Communities. Louisville, KY, is one of the 42 new and renewing communities this round, and the new Silver-level community is aiming to be the best in the region. We caught up with John “Rolf” Eisinger, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, and with Chris Glasser, President of Bicycling for Louisville, to talk more about what this award means to the city and where they will go from here to reach Gold!

This week, we announced the latest round of Bicycle Friendly Communities. Memphis, TN, is one of the 42 new and renewing communities this round, and the new Bronze-level community is aiming to be the best in all of Tennessee. The effort has been spearheaded from many angles, including the city government and a robust advocacy group. We caught up with Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, and with John Paul Shaffer, Program Director at Livable Memphis, to talk more about what this award means to the city and where they will go from here to reach Silver!

Today the League of American Bicyclists announced 42 new and renewing Bicycle Friendly Communities (BFC). With this new round, 69 million people live in a Bicycle Friendly Community. These new awardees join a leading group of more than 350 communities in all 50 states that are improving health, safety and quality of life in cities and towns nationwide.

Imagine: It’s the year 2020. In Fort Collins, Colorado, one in every five people travels by bike — and there are zero bicycle-related fatalities. The foundation for achieving this vision, set forth in the city’s 2014 Bicycle Master Plan, is a low-stress bicycling network: a comfortable, safe and connected system of world-class bicycle infrastructure, accessible to all residents and visitors, aged 8 to 80.

I think we can all agree: Movement is essential to the human condition… Americans, especially American drivers in the Frontier, like to believe they are free to move, but I have found free and equal mobility to be a myth. Some are in charge of it. Some are excluded or even imprisoned by it.

In 2013, the City of Richfield became the first suburb in Minnesota to be awarded the Bicycle Friendly Community designation in Minnesota. We’ve since been joined by our neighboring City of Edina but I’m still often asked by staff and bike advocates in other suburban cities: What are the key issues we should focus on to become a more bicycle friendly suburban community?

Growing up, cycling all over Dublin city center on the thousand-year-old narrow streets I never imagined another life, decades later, bicycling around the northern Virginia suburbs. This isn’t to say you won’t find me ferrying teenagers around in my minivan, but when I can I use my bike instead. It’s fast and it’s cheap and just seems like a nicer way to encounter the world. But nowadays when I bike, many aspects of how and where I ride differ greatly from back in my Dublin days — because of the suburban location.