Bicycle Friendly Communities
About the Program
The Bicycle Friendly Communities (BFC) Award Program helps communities evaluate how bicycle friendly their community is, celebrate progress, and work toward achieving higher-level awards over time. The BFC Program was launched by the Share the Road Cycling Coalition in Canada in August 2010 in partnership with the Washington-based League of American Bicyclists.
The Spring 2021 BFC round is now open. The deadline to apply is April 9.
City of Ottawa receives Gold designation in 2013
Communities complete a comprehensive online application and are judged in four categories, often referred to as the four 'Es': Engineering, Education, Encouragement, and Evaluation & Planning. (In August 2020, Share the Road followed the lead of our partners at the League of American Bicyclists and removed the "Enforcement" section of the Bicycle Friendly Communities Application.) A community must demonstrate achievements in each of the four categories in order to be considered for an award at the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum or Diamond level. Applications are judged by a volunteer panel of expert judges.
The 4 ‘Es’
ENGINEERING - Physical infrastructure and hardware to support cycling
EDUCATION - Programs and campaigns that give people on bikes and in cars the knowledge, skills and confidence to share the road safely
ENCOURAGEMENT - Incentives, promotions and opportunities that inspire and enable people to ride
EVALUATION & PLANNING - Processes that demonstrate a commitment to measuring results and planning for the future
Representatives from the Town of Ingersoll receive their BFC Award at the 2017 Ontario Bike Summit
If you are interested in applying for a BFC award, the next round of applications will close on April 9, 2021. Before starting your application in the online system you may want to check out the Getting Started page, the Frequently Asked Questions page, and the offline version of the application (available in PDF and Word format - note: the application must be submitted online, these offline versions are just for reference). Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions, or would like to be added to the contact list for BFC updates.
BFC Inspiration
Check out our past BFC yearbooks for best practices, highly transferable programs and projects.
Share the Road thanks our BFC program sponsor:
