The state survey used for the 2018 Benchmarking Report is the same survey used for the League of American Bicyclists’ 2017 Bicycle Friendly State (BFS) ranking. The BFS program began in 2008. Beginning in 2012, the Alliance for Biking and Walking and the League of American Bicyclists began sharing the BFS survey data between the BFS program and Benchmarking Report. The state survey was significantly revised for 2017 after an extensive consultation process with member organizations of the League and state Departments of Transportation.
The state survey is distributed to bicycle coordinators at state Departments of Transportation or other contacts as suggested by either member organizations of the League or state Departments of Transportation. Learn more at https://bikeleague.org/states.
The survey consists of 84 survey questions and 9 open-ended questions.
- FOR 28 OF THE 84 SURVEY QUESTIONS, the League initially answered the questions with public data or data that was have obtained from a prior survey. These questions are distinguished in three ways on this survey:
- These questions have a gray font.
- These questions have an explanatory paragraph that generally includes the data source used.
- These questions do not generally ask for an answer, but instead ask for a link to a source.
- FOR 8 OF THE 84 QUESTIONS, the data provided are only used for the biennial Benchmarking Report. These questions are distinguished by the italicized phrase: “This data is not judged for the Bicycle Friendly State ranking but is used for the Benchmarking Report.”
The 2019 state survey can be found here: https://bikeleague.org/sites/default/files/2019_Bicycle_Friendly_State_Survey.pdf
