Bikes Across America

By Thomas Sullivan

This past July, I rubbed elbows with more than 500 cyclists and bicycle-touring advocates at the 40th anniversary celebration banquet for the Adventure Cycling Association. It was the culmination of a three-day event held in Missoula, Montana — the organization's home base.

While I was honored to be sitting there, I also felt woefully inadequate. Though I have cycled around the western part of the U.S. for a number of years, I have yet to traverse the entire country on a bike. Within this crowd, I was certainly a minority.

In fact, a large number of these cyclists were among the 4,000 or so who participated in the 1976 inaugural ride, a journey from Virginia to Oregon in acknowledgment of our Bicentennial.

The ride was called "Bikecentennial '76"; the route they took is today known internationally as the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail. Th e Adventure Cycling Association — originally called Bikecentennial — today boasts more than 50,000 members worldwide and provides 45,000 miles of their own intricately detailed mapped bicycle routes. Each of their nearly 30 routes is unique, whether following the spine of the Rocky Mountains along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route or stringing together historically significant sites that comprise the Underground Railroad route from Mobile, Alabama, to Owen Sound, Ontario.

Besides developing routes, conducting tours, and producing an award-winning monthly magazine, the Adventure Cycling staff strongly advocates for the safety of cycling tourists and the promotion of bicycling initiatives throughout the U.S. — from lobbying state departments of transportation to develop better rumble strip policies (a major detriment for touring cyclists) to the implementation of a carry-on bicycle service on Amtrak.

But by far the organization's most ambitious project is the development of the U.S. Bicycle Route System, a large-scale, interstate network of routes for cyclists that will eventually include more than 50,000 miles and meander through all 50 states and most major metropolitan areas (to date there are 11,000 miles designated in 24 states).

By connecting urban centers to suburban and rural areas throughout the country — using a combination of already existing trails and low-traffic streets and highways — the goal of the USBRS is to provide safe, easily navigable routes to encourage more people to ride bicycles.

"We're building the largest official cycling route network in the world," Adventure Cycling claims, and one important aspect of this network to planners is how it provides a rationale for their communities' active transportation plans. But it goes further. Rather than focusing exclusively on smaller-scale, urban bicycle plans, the USBRS provides the vision for linking isolated systems together into a comprehensive network.

Sources: United States Bicycle Route System, Adventure Cycling Association, and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

It's all about the journey

The day before the 40th celebration in Missoula, I was riding the last leg of an 800-mile bike tour from Lake Tahoe, California, to Portland, Oregon. The dedicated bike trail I was on is known as the Historic Columbia River Highway and is part of Adventure Cycling's Lewis and Clark Trail, as well as yet-to-be designated USBR20 (a number of USBRS routes follow existing Adventure Cycling routes).

All of what I most love about bike touring fell into place on that day. While averaging around 15 mph, I took in all the spectacular waterfalls cascading into the Columbia River. I stopped at amazing overlooks where I met people and swapped stories of our bicycle-touring adventures. I filled up on calories at ice cream and fruit stands, a hamburger drive-in, and a country store, all in small towns along the route that appeared at just the right time. And finally, when the trail reached the outskirts of Portland, I was effortlessly guided onto their well-marked Citywide Bike System, which took me directly to my motel near the airport where the next day I caught a plane back home to Missoula.

This is the future of active transportation with the USBRS.

Perhaps the future is already here. Over the past six years, donations to Adventure Cycling's USBRS project jumped from $20,000 to $150,000, which not only demonstrates the viability of the program but also shows an increased interest from touring cyclists, bicycle advocacy groups, and proponents for active transportation. This enthusiasm coincides with planners, members of metropolitan planning organizations, and state department of transportation officials responding to a populace that wants safer and less congested corridors for commuting and more opportunities for healthy activities. Further, the shift from suburban to urban and from carcentric to car-free lifestyles plays a role in the demand for more bicycle-oriented infrastructure. A comprehensive national bicycle network is certainly an important element within this movement.

Bicycle tourists are also a part of this phenomenon. While cities develop their own networks, long-distance cyclists are often left searching for ways to safely connect to urban systems from the countryside. The USBRS could change that, says Tom Huber, the former pedestrian/bicycle coordinator for the Wisconsin DOT, and now a planning consultant for Toole Design Group in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Mostly you saw small-town America by taking the Adventure Cycling routes," he explains. But the USBRS is "purposely configured to make connections to and through the major urban areas. The goal is not to detour around the major metro areas, but to kind of embrace the whole notion of traveling through them."

The primary idea, according to Huber, is allowing cyclists to safely and easily navigate into larger cities, opening up tourist destinations that in the past were mostly unavailable due to lack of connectivity and inadequate bicycle infrastructure.

The 2015 ribbon cutting for USBR10 celebrated the opening of the 66-mile-long portion of the trail across the Idaho Panhandle. USBR10 now stretches from Washington State to Montana. Photo by Cynthia Gibson.

Linking Atlanta to Chattanooga

The development of the USBRS also links larger cities together and joins the small towns and countryside along the way. A recent example is the newly established, 150-mile USBR21 from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Local cyclists and statewide advocacy groups collaborated to develop and map the route, piecing together existing trails, country roads, and state highways. Submitting and gaining approval from the Georgia DOT and then the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, it was designated a U.S. Bicycle Route this past year.

Katelyn DiGioia, the state bicycle and pedestrian engineer for the Georgia DOT, sees this route as a way for Atlanta cyclists, whether commuters, recreationalists, or tourists, to travel to and from the up-and-coming "hip" city of Chattanooga — a city that is reinventing itself as a recreation-oriented and health-conscious community. DiGioia also envisions tourists (with their bicycles) landing at the Atlanta airport — one of the busiest in the country — and cycling along an easily navigable, safe, and scenic route to Chattanooga, passing through Georgia communities along the way.

"I don't want them to go to Georgia and not be able to see our beautiful state," says DiGioia, "Georgia is mostly rural, and we are proud of our small towns."

There's no question that touring cyclists love small town America. Unlike automobile drivers, who speed through on freeways and frequent fast-food establishments that encircle highway interchanges, a number of studies demonstrate the impact of bicycle tourism in supporting small-town and mostly rural economies.

Cyclists spend more time and money in rural towns and they often frequent locally owned establishments — brewpubs, hotels, restaurants, and shops. In Montana, according to a study by the University of Montana's Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research, multiday cyclists spend $75 to $103 per day while in the state and they stay eight or more nights on average. Compare that to motorized tourists who spend $58 to $64 per day and stay three nights. It is this relatively untapped segment of the tourist economy that only a handful of communities are just now beginning to realize and cultivate.

The USBRS also coaxes urbanites to leave the city by bicycle and explore places outside of the urban core — whether regional parks, farms, or anyplace USA. Byron Rushing, the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the Atlanta Regional Commission, an MPO, sees the metropolitan area tying into a national bicycle network as a way for people to connect with nature.

"Bicycling is thought of as more of an urban transportation mode ... But bike touring is, for me, the best way to get out into the countryside, if not the wilderness," says Rushing, who is a bike commuter and tourist. "The U.S. Bicycle Route System provides a cool link between those two things. [Imagine] when you can conceive of getting out onto the route from downtown Atlanta and a couple of days later finding yourself in a National Forest somewhere."

The Delina Crossroads Market in Cornersville, Tennessee, is a popular stop along USBR23, which goes through Nashville. Photo by Phillip Vickery.

Bumpy beginnings

The concept of a national bicycle route system — one that somewhat emulates the Interstate Highway system — was first conceived of in the early 1980s by cycling advocates fresh off the Bikecentennial ride and the formation of the Adventure Cycling Association.

The idea was presented to AASHTO, and in 1983 the first two routes were designated and signed. Route 76 is an east-west route through Virginia and Kentucky that closely follows the TransAm route. Running north to south is Route 1 in Virginia and North Carolina, also known as Adventure Cycling's Atlantic Coast Route.

But according to Ginny Sullivan, the director of travel initiatives for Adventure Cycling, the implementation of the network faltered, likely due to the lack of a comprehensive plan, no funding, and the absence of a regulatory-type framework.

Approaching the Federal Highway Administration in the early 2000s, staffers from Adventure Cycling suggested using their existing bicycle routes as a way to jump-start the system, and by 2003, a task force was created within AASHTO that included state DOT officials and staff from Adventure Cycling, the Mississippi River Trail, and the East Coast Greenway Alliance. Together they created the newly resurrected USBRS corridor map and a "purpose of policy statement" which was approved by AASHTO in 2009.

While the policy statement outlines the procedures for having a route designated, the corridor map identifies a 50-mile-wide swath where an existing route may exist or be developed. Additional long or short connector corridors may be added and a number assigned. In other words, the system can grow over time.

It is within this 50-mile corridor that individual trails and roads are identified, and that's where state bicycle and pedestrian planners, community planners and decision makers, and bicycling advocates and volunteers come in. This type of collaboration is basically how USBR21 in Georgia was created. The cost of signing the routes and providing maps usually falls upon individual jurisdictions and DOTs.

To aid in this process, Adventure Cycling developed the USBRS technical assistance center in 2009, a self-funded clearinghouse of sorts that educates and consults with planners, engineers, bicycle advocates, and government agencies, at a variety of scales, on how to collaboratively and innovatively develop the network.

Planning for the network

Armed with an AASHTO-recognized plan and more than 50,000 miles of proposed bicycle routes through every state in the country, and coupled with a coalition of active transportation enthusiasts and advocates, the USBRS is clearly poised to exponentially expand.

Yet, while many urban planners are rapidly developing their communities' active transportation networks, discontinuity within these routes, particularly from the city to the suburbs and the suburbs to the countryside, are the greatest potential roadblock in creating a unified nationwide system.

In Atlanta, Rushing insists that a more holistic vision is needed in order to connect the gaps in their trail systems. "Counterintuitively, one of the problems with bicycle projects is they seem too small, especially in a bigger metro region like Atlanta," but, he continues, "when you start to be able to say: 'look at this cool connection. It's a four-mile link of rail/ trail, but then it connects into a national network,' then it begins to elevate small projects to that level of national importance that really gives them the attention that they need."

Seeing the BeltLine, a rail/trail connecting about 45 Atlanta neighborhoods, and the Silver Comet Trail — winding its way from the northern suburbs into Alabama — linking components of the USBRS is the type of comprehensive vision that Rushing advocates.

In Los Angeles, Alan Thompson, a senior planner with Active Transportation and Special Programs for the Southern California Association of Governments, is working hard to connect active-transportation infrastructure to public transport hubs as part of a program titled the First-Last Mile Strategic Plan (which won the 2015 National Planning Excellence Award for a Best Practice: planning.org/awards/2015/firstlastmile.htm).

But Thompson also wants to see municipalities link their localized and relatively isolated bicycle routes to yet-to-be designated USBR66 — Adventure Cycling's newest mapped route from Chicago to Santa Monica. Such local and regional linages provide opportunities for cyclists to visit attractions that reside along the quintessential American tourist attraction — Route 66.

"Look, let's work with planners to try and figure out how to get into cities," advises Atlanta's Rushing, "because with all the neat work with protected bike lanes and urban bike share systems in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, each leading the way on urban systems, it really means a lot to me to be able to take my everyday routes and then potentially turn left and head out across the continent."

Thomas Sullivan is an affiliated faculty member with the department of Parks, Tourism, and Recreation Management at the University of Montana. He is also a tour leader for the Adventure Cycling Association.

Two cyclists take an autumn ride through a cottonwood forest in Utah's Zion National Park. Purestock/Alamy Stock Photo.