Looking to get a bike lane or other bicycle facility installed?

Great! Now you'll need to do a little legwork and research to have the best chance of success.

You can find out by contacting your city's or county's transportation department.

If the road is locally controlled and there are no plans for installing bicycle facilities on the road in the near future, you should follow up with your local elected officials and the transportation department. Polite, professional, & persistent grassroots advocacy is the key when you're starting from scratch. Work with a local bicycle advocacy organization if there's one in your area.

If it's a state-controlled road, then GDOT is who you would contact. The GDOT Bike/Ped Coordinator is a great place to start for state road inquiries.

Next, find out if the road is already scheduled for any bicycle improvements.

Ask your local transportation department if it has a "Bicycle Master Plan." If so, ask if the road you're interested in is listed and where it falls in the construction schedule. If no BMP exists, work with your local transportation department to develop one ASAP!

The best bet, long-term, for ensuring that bike facilities are included on a given road is to watch for announcements on the development of long-range transportation plans in your area. By federal law, all urban areas with a population over 50,000 have to have a "long range transportation plan," which is updated every few years. The body responsible for developing this plan is known as an MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization). Find out who your local MPO is and check their LRTP for slated bicycle projects. Citizen advocacy can help move projects from later to sooner implementation.

A word of caution: depending on budgetary constraints and when the road is scheduled for regular maintenance or re-paving, it may take several years from when you first submit a request to when you see an actual striped bike lane. Keep at it, though! Your efforts are the only way better bicycle facilities will happen!