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Arkansas’ bicycling population is growing up, and a growing number of these recreational cyclists are helping advocate for more paths, lanes and safety measures while personally demonstrating the pleasure, exercise and efficiency that comes with traveling on two wheels.

Cities like Little Rock and North Little Rock, with the help of county and federal government, have invested in recreational cycling infrastructure. The bike paths and lanes these investments have built have given recreational cyclists refuge from car-clogged streets. The next step for bicyclists in Arkansas – many of whom still have to use their cars to get their bikes to the trail – is to have the opportunity to leave their cars at home and cycle more for transportation.

Tim McKuin, who blogs about alternative transportation solutions, would welcome that. He has ideas for improvements, but gives credit for the strides that have already been made. “Little Rock has done an awesome job with recreational cycling facilities,” he said.

McKuin has been cycling nearly 20 years, including a short stint as a bike messenger in Chicago. Now he’s a student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law and a resident of the Central High School Neighborhood Historic District where he and his wife, Vanessa, are working to complete a historic rehab of their 1901 craftsman-style home. In his spare time he co-writes the blog with Cary Tyson. His goal with the blog, he says, is to shift the conversation on transportation in central Arkansas. That shift would presumably be to a slower but more active speed because McKuin’s blog is all about improved walkways and bikeways.

For a while, McKuin worked at Competitive Cyclist, an online bicycle shop that began in Little Rock and grew to be one of the largest online retailers of bicycles and bicycling products in the world. Competitive Cyclist has since been sold and moved, but while he was there he worked with cyclists who had been riding in the state since before it was convenient. McKuin’s boss told him that as a cyclist in Little Rock in the mid-’90s, he knew every other cyclist in town and if he saw a roof rack on a car, he always knew who it was. Over the past 15 years, though, that community has skyrocketed.

According to McKuin, a lot of people equate cycling with carbon fiber bikes, lycra and fitness and have not made the mental shift toward cycling as transportation. “Because most people think of it as recreational, it’s like a luxury activity and they think of funding it as an optional thing to do,” he said.

McKuin says the biggest cycling need in Arkansas is infrastructure, which he thinks will encourage more people to ride. But bike lanes aren’t enough, he says. “A few people may choose to ride on that, but the majority don’t consider that safe.”

While McKuin is pushing the conversation for paths and lanes, Aly Signorelli is trying to educate. Preparation can go a long way to helping cyclists feel safer where they are riding, she says. That was Signorelli’s goal for the Car Free Learning Fair she helped organize with the city of Little Rock this past fall.

“Our goal for the fair was to reach people who would like to use a bike for utility – to get to work or school, the grocery store, whatever – but don’t feel that they’re prepared to do so,” she said.

Signorelli is a member of Bicycle Advocates of Central Arkansas and is a voting member of Little Rock’s Bicycle Friendly Community Committee.

The Car Free Learning Fair was one of the events held during the week of the Mayor’s Car Free Challenge in Little Rock. Signorelli wanted the fair to address the issues cyclists were having and “show them that using a bike for transportation can work well.”

She saw the event as a success. “The volunteers who tended each table answered questions from people who really wanted help,” she said.

A row of booths were set up at the fair with different topics like safe cycling routes, how to use the bus with a bike or even what to wear if you’re riding to work. Across from the booths many of those who staffed the booths showed off the bikes they use for commuting or trips to the grocery store.

Mason Ellis, Associate AIA, with the Witsell Evans Rasco firm, worked a booth at the event that had a sign asking, “But won’t people think I’m weird?”

It was apt for Ellis to answer that question. He’s become an unofficial bike-commuting ambassador of sorts for the Little Rock area with his Life in the Rock blog. He’s used it to document his experiences as he commutes and runs errands by bicycle in central Arkansas.

“I want to make biking not feel so strange,” Ellis said. “If you bike to a friend’s house, to church, it’s not strange.”

He’s documented his transportation spending for a car-less month and the events of a lunchtime trip from downtown Little Rock to North Little Rock via bike and bus.

A handful of Arkansas businesses have joined the cycling community, too. Garver Engineers in North Little Rock was recently designated by the League of American Bicyclists as a silver level bicycle-friendly business. The LAB levels are like LEED ratings for non-motorized transportation. Businesses need to have things like secure bike storage. Places for employees to change and even showers help out, too. Garver provides all of those amenities to its employees, along with a location right on the Arkansas River Trail.

”Being friendly to cycling encourages people to be out and exercise, which I believe makes them happier and healthier,” Brock Johnson, Garver’s president and CEO, said. “I also believe that a bicycle-friendly community has an overall positive effect on the economy.”

Bell and Co. Accounting in North Little Rock is another bicycle friendly business. The company isn’t on the LAB list, but could soon be. It lets employees park bikes near their desks and even gives its staff a bike allowance that can be applied toward a bike or equipment.

All of this is good news to Signorelli, who’s happy there’s energy building around bicycling in central Arkansas. “Lots of people are stepping up, hosting cycling events and planning trail projects and working with communities to become bike friendly. And it’s making a difference,” she said. “We’re starting to feel less like individual people on bikes, and more like a cycling community.