Over the past few years, the City of Yuma has made significant improvements in its bicycle facilities, and as a result the City was awarded a Bicycle Friendly Community designation from the League of American Cyclists — the nation’s premier bicycle organization.  Likewise, the cities of Somerton and San Luis have made serious efforts to improve bicycle access and safety.  And now Yuma County has now made a commitment to facilitate bicycle travel within their road improvements.

While a few local merchants have realized the benefits of attracting cycling shoppers, many local merchants and community institutions have not yet facilitated bicycle access to those locations that are now easily visited by bike.

So here is the score —

Thumbs up to:

*  Sprouts — for the installation of their attractive bike rack.

*  Foothills Frys — for proactively providing bike rack parking for cyclists from the day the store opened.

Thumbs down to:

*  Starbucks — their cafe at 16th and Pacific as well as their cafe on the “big curve” attract significant numbers of bicycle traveling customers, but after repeated requests by their customers — no bike racks.  One day the 16th St. operation had so many cyclists the bikes were literally hanging from tree branches due to lack of bicycle parking.

*  Jack in the Box — locations both in Yuma and Somerton have significant numbers of cycling customers, but no bicycle parking.

*  Yuma Regional Medical Center — YRMC does a wonderful job teaching recovering heart patients how to live healthier lives, and provides excellent exercise and lecture based Cardio Rehab program — but fails to support its health conscious staff who currently bike to work, or would like to bike to work — the Medical Center has no staff bicycle racks or lockers.

The Yuma Regional Bicycle Coalition is available to work with any business or community institution to help them design bicycle parking for customers and/or staff.  Every business can be a bicycle friendly business, and can reap the benefits of having cycling customers — and we are here to help.  Reach out to us at yrbc@yahoo.com.