The Arlington government’s updated “bike-comfort map” will rely more on available data to help bicyclists get where they want to go.
With five levels of color coding, numerical scores for each stretch of road and more prominent notices of hills, the new design builds on previous evaluations of all major roads in Arlington.
“We’re in the final stages of getting it to the printer,” said Mary Dallao, director of active-transportation programs for Arlington County Commuter Services.
The Arlington government since 2015 has offered maps that rate roadways, from easy to hard, for bicyclists. The last update was in 2022.
Those earlier maps were based more on anecdotal data offered by riders. While past versions have proved popular, “we didn’t have as much data as we have now,” Dallao said at the Oct. 9 meeting of the county government’s Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
The new map, which was previously vetted with the Bicycle Advisory Committee, draws on a variety of collated data, ranging from pavement conditions to a road’s slope, in evaluating every stretch of roadway in Arlington.
The project borrows from work at agencies in cities such as Boston and San Francisco. San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency, for instance, groups bikeways into four levels of stress on riders.
Arlington’s new, color-coded map will have five levels: most comfortable (green); comfortable (blue); less comfortable (red); not recommended (gray); and major thoroughfares that are bicyclist no-go zones (white).
There also will be numerical scores for each stretch of road, and more prominent notices of hills, on the new map.
Eric Goodman, acting chair of the Pedestrian Advisory Committee, noted that the degree of comfort, or challenge, on a stretch of road can be in the eye of the beholder. Each rider would have to individually determine the most important criteria for making that determination, which may not always jibe with that of those who created the map, he said.
Goodman also asked, since the staff was in front of the Pedestrian Advisory Committee, whether the availability of sidewalks could be included when the map was next updated. Dallao took note of the request.
Dallao said the goal of the 2024 map was to make the switch to the new evaluation criteria and get it published, then build on it later.
“The next iteration, we can get under the hood more,” she said.
Plans are for the map to be updated every two years in print, with the most recent edition available online.
