BY ETHAN STAMPER FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA —
The Opelika Bicycle Advisory Committee is looking to elevate Opelika into a certified bicycle-friendly community by raising awareness and improving the quality cycling all across town.
The Opelika Bicycle Advisory Committee was formed in 2013 by Shirley Lazenby, current vice president of the group, and ever since it has been committed to transforming Opelika into a League of American Bicyclists (LAB) certified bicycle-friendly community.
“They [League of American Bicyclists] sort of propagated this idea of a bicycle friendly community,” Lazenby said. “The reason it’s good for small towns like us is that we can take off a little nibble and work becoming a bicycle friendly community; we’ve been given honorable mentions twice during our applications to become a bicycle friendly community, but we haven’t quite gotten to the bronze level yet.”
Bicycle Friendly Community awards reflect local leaders’ ongoing work to build better places to bike and evaluate those efforts as part of a national movement. Each of the five levels of the Bicycle Friendly Community award — diamond, platinum, gold, silver and bronze, plus an honorable mention category — provide a clear path for cities and towns to continuously improve.
The path by which communities can improve their chances to win this distinction are laid out by LAB’s five E’s: equity, engineering, education, encouragement and evaluation. The community and its leaders have to show active efforts to facilitate the development of these principles in their community through acts of city improvement and outreach.
“To reach bronze it means that, at bare minimum, your city leadership and the citizens are committed to making bicycling safe in your community,” Lazenby said.
The city has made strides toward achieving the goal by putting a bike tech master plan in place, as well as through the deployment of other principles of the five E’s. It has implemented curriculum in the city schools, as well as worked to develop new engineering projects to make bicycling safer in Opelika. At the next Opelika Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting, State Rep. Jeremy Gray will be attending to discuss Innovate Alabama and the vision for a recently approved project called Sweet Trails Alabama. The project will set aside a sum of money to work on and improve recreational trails all throughout the state.
One of these developments is the Johnny Ray Rail Trail, a citizen-led initiative to bring a regional rails-to-trails project to eastern Alabama. The goal for the Johnny Ray Trail is to develop 37 miles of ADA-friendly, non-motorized, multi-use trail connecting Chambers, Lee and Randolph counties. It is being proposed to use the decommissioned passenger rail line, historically known as the Johnny Ray Line, as the bedrock for the project.
For any members of the community that are interested in joining or simply adding their voice to the Opelika Bicycle Advisory Committee, the next meeting is Thursday, Aug. 17 at 5:30 p.m. at the Opelika Public Library.
More information about future meetings or events can be found on the Facebook page, and more information about the Johhny Ray Rail Trail project can be found at www.johhnyrayrailtrail.com.
