BikeNWA toolkit boosts bike-friendly businesses

A bicycle advocacy group is taking a proactive step to help businesses become more bike-friendly for their customers and employees.

The Bike Alliance of Northwest Arkansas (BikeNWA) has partnered with Bentonville consulting agency LaneShift to create what it’s calling a “Bike Friendly Toolkit.” The guide is available for download through the BikeNWA website (bikenwa.org), as well as area chambers of commerce and visitors bureaus.

Paxton Roberts, BikeNWA’s executive director, said the goal of the toolkit is to attract more tourists and guide companies on how to improve their work culture and adopt new norms to increase employees’ bikeability.

“BikeNWA is excited to roll out this bicycle-friendly toolkit to better partner with local businesses to increase awareness and create advocacy for biking because we know that bikes are good for business,” Roberts said. “Employees who engage in biking to work are less stressed, more productive, take fewer sick days and reduce the cost of healthcare in a business.

“By having a strong bicycle infrastructure and safe routes for bicyclists, businesses can also increase pedestrian traffic, as well as hire talent that uses biking as a permanent source of transportation.”