In the 1970s, Fayetteville designated certain streets for bike routes through town, and signs were added along those streets chosen for routes. The city tried to pick out streets with less traffic and flatter grades while also paying attention to connecting residential areas with public uses.
The bike routes led soon afterward to creation of the “Fayetteville Bicycle Map,” an effort in about 1980 to map the streets with color codes to give bicyclists an idea of which streets were better for pedaling.
The cartography by Gregory Mitchell used:
- Green to show streets that were “easy,” with sufficient width to accommodate both automotive vehicles and bicycles or those with low traffic volume.
- Yellow to show “medium” streets, which might be connecting streets with narrower space or no shoulder. Hilliness might also be a factor.
- Red for “difficult” streets that have higher volumes of traffic moving at faster speeds and recommended only for experienced cyclists.
- Blue for “very difficult,” streets not recommended for bicycling such as College Avenue or the Fulbright Expressway.
- Red circles to warn of bad intersections or rough railroad crossings.
Fayetteville had no bicycle trails at the time, but the posted routes and Bicycle Map were early bicycle infrastructure that eventually guided development of the city’s current network of paved trails.