The Bicycle Friendly Community assessment is a good way to measure our community progress while providing a framework and key steps that Erie needs to take to be safer, more accessible and enjoyable to bike. It’s about getting more people to bike and to do so more often. The essential elements across five categories, which known as the Five E’s, are consistent in making great places for bicycling. The five E’s include: Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Evaluation & Planning, and Enforcement.

Bike Erie supports using the Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) application as part of a framework for tracking the progress of each city, municipality and place throughout Erie County. While there are additional inputs and criteria that are important to implement, track and keep in mind, we think the the BFC framework and designation should be the core standard that we all look to and work to achieve. Because every place has its own natural benefits and challenges, we must utilize our best discretion in each location throughout the County. Likewise, we should not limit ourselves by the BFC standards in our efforts to make our communities safer, more accessible and enjoyable to bike and walk.

• Check out this summary infographic of just a few of the outputs, outcomes and attributes necessary to achieve each level.
• Here’s a more detailed but still not comprehensive list of the attributes that it takes to become a BFC.
• Here’s a list of Bicycle Friendly Communities throughout the U.S. (5 of which are in PA).
• Bicycle Friendly Community Application (Current for 2015)

Deadline for applying: each year the application date is usually in early August.