Bike League's 2014 State rankings: Maryland #7, Virginia #18

On the heels of Bicycling Magazine's best biking cities rankings, Bike League has issued it's 2014 state rankings in which Maryland came in 7th, Virginia came in 18th and Washington, DC is still not a state.

That's Maryland's highest ranking ever, but Viriginia has been ranked as high as 13th in the past. Washington, the Edwin Moses of bike league ranking, came in 1st again. Alabama came in last.

Both states did badly on infrastructure and funding, but Maryland got the highest score on education and encouragement. 

Comments

[Greenbelt]

Maybe if Maryland's education and encouragement efforts were targeted at the State Highway Administration they'd be more effective at getting funding and infrastructure. The people are there -- we've visioned and planned this to death. It's SHA that's the hold up.

SHA's mode of operation is to either do the absolute minimum bike or pedestrian facility that they can get away with, or else propose a highway width expansion so grandiose and expansive as a condition of adding nice bike and pedestrian facilities that the whole project is guaranteed to generate community opposition, and they can go back to building interchanges or sprawl facilitation (aka "regional mobility") projects like they want.

[T]

I prefer NOVA to the MD burbs and I grew up in the MD burbs. I'm less worried about education and more worried about getting more people out there. The more cyclists that are out there, the safer I think I am. And I don't think putting up signs on highways to say bicycles allowed here is all that helpful in "infrastructure." But that's just my two cents.

I do like how places like College Park suddenly seem to have developed cycling more into their infrastructure planning. When I went there, there were few bike racks, the MUPs on the northern/western side of campus didn't really exist, and it just wasn't encouraged. Over the years coming back to tailgates, I've noticed some really positive changes there.

[SJE]

I'd second Greenbelt. Education and encouragement for cyclists is great, but it kinda puts a damper on things when you get hit from behind by a motorist.