Bicycle Friendly States - South Dakota 41 of 50

I don't know how much to read into South Dakota being ranked 41st of 50 states in the "Bicycle Friendly States" on the League of American Bicyclists website. After all, being such a sparsely populated state where over 1/8 of all the population is in one city (Sioux Falls), how much needs to be done in cities like Vermillion where I live. After all, a city of 10,000 people isn't that hard to navigate on bike.

Sioux Falls is making great strides with bike lanes and bike paths. All the Sioux Falls bloggers need to get on board and try to garner a "bicycle friendly city" status. I will have to read into this more and see what things I can do down here to help South Dakota's overall status as well.

Below is the information that can be found HERE:

South Dakota

State Rank: 41 out of 50.

Reasons for Ranking: South Dakota has state funds for bicycle education programming but also has discriminatory mandatory bike lane law and no accommodation or complete streets policy.
South Dakota's Bicycle Friendly Communities

Currently there are no cities in South Dakota that have been designated as bicycle friendly communities. Your city can be the first. To apply for BFC designation, you'll need to review the materials at www.bicyclefriendlycommunity.org/apply.cfm.


What do some of you South Dakota bloggers think? What can we do to make South Dakota more bike friendly? Sioux Falls has a good start. What can smaller to mid-size cities like Vermillion do to be considered bike friendly? Looking at the application I don't see very many cities in South Dakota being able to get past Part I of the application. Not many places in South Dakota have a "Bicycle/Pedestrian coordinator". Of course, maybe this application is a way of saying, get off your butts and push local government to think about it. Sounds like a job for Biking Brady! Did I really just say that? It's Friday and I'm delirious. I need to sleep on this. Comments/thoughts are always welcome.