Urbana City Council discussed the possibility of the city becoming a “Bicycle Friendly Community” at its meeting, Monday.

Jennifer Selby, Urbana civil engineer, said she is filling out an application to have Urbana certified by the League of American Bicyclists as a bike-friendly community.

Urbana will be given a rating of platinum, gold, silver or bronze based on how well it accommodates its bicyclists. Criteria for the rating includes how well the city educates its population on bicycle use, how much it encourages bicycle use, how well it enforces proper bicycle use and how well it assesses problems and makes necessary changes.

Selby said she will work on the application over the next month while on maternity leave.

At the meeting, she went over the positive aspects of Urbana’s current bicycle infrastructure. The city has bike paths over most of its major roads, several programs that provide bicycle use education and encouragement- including Champaign County Bikes and police officers on bicycles, she said.

Brandon Bowersox, alderman for Ward 4, said consolidation of Urbana’s bicycle infrastructure should be a priority.

“We need to figure out how to bring disjointed campaigns into some coherent umbrella program,” Bowersox said. “We need everyone to be working together.”

“Education for the entire community should also be a priority, Bowersox said.

“We need to give everybody a chance to learn,” Bowersox said. “We need to reach out to everybody from elementary to middle to high school, to the university students that come down and also the older members of the community.”

Charlie Smyth, alderman for Ward 1, is a member of Champaign County Bikes. The group distributes the Champaign County Bicycle Map, which shows all the roads and paths that can be accessed by bicycle.

“We printed 30,000 last year and they were very successful,” Smyth said. “We’re starting to run out but we’ll be printing another 30,000 next April.”