Fort Wayne speed limit change could help poor bike rating

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — When a nationwide ranking on the ease of biking for transportation was released last month, Fort Wayne’s results were less than stellar.

The city received a rating of 11 out of 100 in PeopleForBikes’ annual City Ratings, dismal for a city that prides itself on its extensive trail network. The rating was less than half of the average city rating of 28, and it put the Summit City at a ranking of 32nd in Indiana, 432nd in the Midwest and 1,879th nationally. The ratings judge biking as a transportation method in cities across the world.

Valerie Litznerski-Eicholtz, who is the secretary of Fort Wayne cycling club 3 Rivers Velo Sport and has commuted by bike in multiple cities in the Midwest, said the ratings were a bit harsh given Fort Wayne’s extensive trail network, although she acknowledged the network is far from perfect.

“I did feel like it’s a little harsh. I don’t think that we’re terrible. But one of the things that stood out the most and that we’ve definitely talked about is our multi-use paths. We have a lot, and they’re pretty well maintained for the most part, they’re in good areas, but it’s the interruptions that are the issue,” Litzerski-Eicholtz said.

Fort Wayne’s score also declined sharply in 2020 to 10 from 29 in 2019, confusing many residents.

James Holm, director of community engagement for Fort Wayne Trails , said the drop in score was surprising, especially given the growth of the city’s trail network over the past five years.

“The numbers were sort of surprising to me. If you look back at 2019 I think our score was in the 30s, and then in 2018 It was just below that, but it had an upward trend. And then in 2020, it drops way down and then it’s like flat,” Holm said. “The trail network, to talk about it specifically, has grown a lot.”

Rebecca Davies, City Ratings program director at PeopleForBikes, clarified that Fort Wayne’s score dropped significantly in 2020 due to City Ratings implementing customized city speed limits that year. Prior to 2020, PeopleForBikes assumed all cities had a default speed limit of 25 mph, while Fort Wayne had a default speed limit of 30 mph.

Phil LaBrash, traffic engineer for the City of Fort Wayne, noted that subpar scores were a trend amongst many of Indiana’s largest cities, not just Fort Wayne.

“Indianapolis, they have a rating of 12 versus our 11. South Bend has an eight, Evansville has an eight. These are all the largest cities in Indiana, and none of them really scored very well,” LaBrash said.

How do City Ratings scores work ?

To aggregate City Ratings scores, PeopleForBikes takes data on bicycle and other relevant infrastructure from OpenStreetMap and uses the data provided to judge cities in six categories: ‘people,’ or access to residential areas, ‘opportunity,’ which is access to jobs and education, access to ‘core services’ such as hospitals, grocery stores and other needs, ‘recreation,’ which includes parks and trails, access to retail and access to transit hubs.

Fort Wayne received its highest rating, 15, in the recreation and retail categories and its lowest rating, 3, in the transit category.

Scores for each category are determined using PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) , which measures cities’ bike networks through metrics in the SPRINT acronym: safe speeds, protected bike lanes, reallocated space, intersection treatments, network connections and trusted data.

The importance of safe speeds and other ways to improve bike infrastructure

Davies said a big factor in Fort Wayne’s poor rating was its lack of streets with safe speeds, which allow bikes and cars to safely mix. PeopleForBikes’ benchmark for safe speeds is a speed limit of 25 mph for residential areas, with additional safety measures taken for busier, higher-speed roads. With Fort Wayne’s default residential speed limit of 30 mph, most of the city’s streets are classified as “high stress” for biking by PeopleForBikes City Ratings’ standards.

Davies said keeping speeds low on neighborhood streets can not only increase a city’s City Ratings score, but can keep bicylclists and other residents safe.

“Keeping speeds low on, particularly on neighborhood streets, it’s really important. And Fort Wayne is an example, like a number of other U.S. cities, where the speeds are a bit too high on neighborhood streets. The speed limit’s 30 miles per hour, it really needs to be 25,” Davies said. “If Fort Wayne lowered its residential speed limits to 25 miles per hour, its city rating score would increase substantially.”

Labrash said the City of Fort Wayne is actively in the process of lowering the speed limit for residential areas to 25 mph, hoping to get the project done in the next year or two, adding that it is a much more complicated process than many realize.

“Not only are we in favor of it, it’s something that we have been working on since 2023, before my time as traffic engineer,” LaBrash said, referring to a reduced residential speed limit. “We have been working on changing the speed limits in neighborhoods, specifically from 30 and lowering that down to 25 miles an hour. And it’s not necessarily a simple process of doing that. Our staff here started – we have to inventory every single one of our streets to determine which streets in the neighborhood are signed at 30 miles per hour.”

Litznerski-Eicholtz, however, said that she did not think lowering the speed limit would be as effective as some may anticipate, pointing to measures such as more bike-specific signage that she believes could have a bigger impact.

“I’m not sure that lowering the speed limit would be terribly effective. One of the things that I’ve heard discussed quite a bit in the past is signage,” Litznerski-Eicholtz said. “When drivers see signs that indicate that there’s cycling traffic or ordinance specific to cyclists, then they tend to think about cyclists and anticipate cyclists more, and signage has proven to help improve safety for riders.”

LaBrash said he was also open to bike safety infrastructure such as signage and education, referring to the measures as “tools in our toolbox.”

Another main area of bike infrastructure Davies noted needed to improve in Fort Wayne was the presence of protected bike lanes rather than just painted bike lanes, citing the painted bike lanes on Wayne and Berry streets specifically, as well as other areas with many destinations accessible by bike.

Looking to the future, trail network is a bright spot

Davies acknowledged that while Fort Wayne has a lot of work to do regarding its bike infrastructure, there are some bright spots, particularly within the city’s trail network. Fort Wayne has over 125 miles of trail popular with residents and constructed primarily by Fort Wayne Trails, with projects such as the Pufferbelly Trail expansion and the new Golden Spike trail that will connect north and south Fort Wayne in progress.

“I do think Fort Wayne is doing a great job with the trail network and trail expansion. Love to see that there’s already a number of great trails and more in the works I’m aware of. So that’s a really, really positive piece of the work that’s been done and is going on for bicycling in Fort Wayne,” Davies said.

Litznerski-Eicholtz said she acknowledged the time, effort and money that goes into creating bike and trail infrastructure and that she is grateful for the infrastructure already in place.

“I do realize that it takes money, it takes effort, it takes time. So not all of these things can happen right away, and the community really does appreciate what is already there. We do see them get used quite a bit,” she said.

Holm said that while Fort Wayne certainly has a long way to go in providing a high-quality, connected bike network for its residents, progress is being made as different pieces of the puzzle are added to what he already thinks is a fairly connected city.

“Are we the most bike friendly city? Certainly not. There’s a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of connections to be made and those things are continued to be worked on, especially at a trails level,” Holm said.

“I think our city is great for connectivity. The combination of trails, sidewalks — which are definitely part of connectivity, although they don’t always get a lot of attention just because they’re sort of all over the place —  I can get a lot of places here. Obviously there’s room to improve, and that’s what we can continue to do,” Holm added.

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