Hoosiers spoke, the Indiana Department of Transportation listened, and now there are another 187 miles in the U.S. Bicycle Route System or USBRS portfolio of roads, multi-use paths, and bike lanes.
[Above image by INDOT]
Recently, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Adventure Cycling Association formally designated a route connecting two Indiana bike trails as U.S. Bicycle Route 37 – one of four new bike routes approved by the two organizations earlier this year. The new route connects the Erie Lackawanna Trail in northwest Indiana to the Monon Trail in the central part of the state.
The USBRS is a series of cycling routes along publicly owned roads, multi-use paths, and bike lanes that connect to the border of another state or country, or to another USBRS route.
No physical infrastructure is required for USBRS designation, the designation does not imply an infrastructure investment, and no signs or constructed infrastructure are required for the designation, AASHTO and Adventure Cycling said.
Both noted that their joint USBRS goal is to have a 50,000-mile network suitable for cross-country traveling, regional touring, and commuting. A digital map of all current USBRS routes is available here.
[Editor’s note: State departments of transportation interested in doing more to support bicycling in their states can order the 2024 “AASHTO Bike Guide.” The guide, recently updated from the original 2012 edition, was developed by AASHTO’s Committee on Design and the Technical Committee on Non-motorized Transportation and offers engineering design guidance on the physical infrastructure needed to support bicycle travel.]
In addition to approving USBRS routes, AASHTO and Adventure Cycling provide free technical assistance to state departments of transportation that want to develop a USBRS? route.
In a blog post, INDOT said an enhanced public involvement process gave more cyclists more time to ride the proposed route and provide comments before the department submitted the official route designation request to AASHTO.
“Many Hoosiers submitted comments about their concerns, and we wanted to make sure that we addressed them,” said Alison Shaner, a transportation modeler and planner with the agency.
The designation process was the first time INDOT’s 2023 Planning Public Involvement Plan or PPIP had been applied to a new bicycle route, and it was “the first time this process included a public comment period,” she noted.
INDOT said the PPIP called for a weeklong public comment period, but the agency decided to extend that to 30 days because the route was receiving heightened public interest.
A local Tippecanoe County planner rode parts of the proposed route and recruited other cyclists to ride it “to get a more authentic feel for the route and some of the alternatives that INDOT came up with,” the blog post noted. Later, the agency and the county worked together to refine the route before submitting it to AASHTO.
The USBRS is maintained by state and local governments and is developed for experienced long-distance bicyclists, generally considered “touring cyclists.” Routes often contain roads that have no special treatments or lanes for bicyclists, but they do not include mountain bike trails.
