Congratulations on your U.S. Bicycle Route designation! Now comes the most important part – promoting your route and providing the tools and resources for cyclists to ride it. 

Promotion Checklist

There are many ways to approach promotion of a U.S. Bicycle Route, and we encourage you to be creative. Below, we’ve listed several ideas. The more strategies used, the more people you will reach. Make sure to check out the Signing and Promotion Resources pages for more information and examples.

• Involve state and local transportation and tourism agencies, as well as natural resource departments, recreation agencies such as state/national parks, bicycle/trail advocacy groups, engaged municipalities, and local businesses.

• Sign your U.S. Bicycle Route.

• Host a promotional event such as a grand opening, ribbon cutting, and/or an inaugural ride. 

• Provide information about designated routes on websites, especially the state tourism and state transportation agency websites. 

• Create a press release and push it out to media outlets. 

• Create online content that will inspire interest such as photos, quotes, testimonials, stories, hashtags, blog posts, videos, graphics, and articles and promote them through social media and websites. Share content with partners so they can do the same.

• Create printed content such as brochures, maps, flyers, stickers, etc. and provide to state and local tourism, recreation, transportation, parks and economic development agencies, businesses, hospitality, community/visitor centers, and other public places where they can be displayed.

• Contact radio, TV stations and podcasts for interviews.

• Do an economic impact study on bicycling and/or bike tourism through the DOT, tourism, advocacy group or university program.

• Host or participate in a bicycle summit/conference and create a session about U.S. Bicycle Routes.

• Work with businesses and organizations in your area to be bicycle friendly and check out Building Bicycle Tourism for more ideas on how to develop bicycle tourism in your area.

• Talk to your elected officials about the U.S. Bicycle Route System to increase support for bicycling and bicycle tourism. Encourage them to pass policies that benefit bicycling.

In addition, Adventure Cycling can help promote your U.S. Bicycle Route in the following ways:

• Incorporate information about the new U.S. Bicycle Route into our national press release. 

• Add downloadable digital maps of the designated route to the interactive map of U.S. Bicycle Routes on our Download USBRS Maps page.

• Show the designated route on the National Corridor Plan.

• Promote through social and traditional media. Follow U.S. Bicycle Routes on Twitter and on Facebook and visit our media page.  

• Provide models, best practices, and examples for promoting bicycle routes from other states and countries.