For years, Portland’s bike community has had a distinct goal: Be named a “platinum” city for cycling by the League of American Bicyclists. We’d topped out at gold before, with Davis, California beating us out as the only U.S. city with a platinum designation.

Well, no longer. This morning, the League announced Portland’s new platinum “Bicycle Friendly Community” status:

Community Highlights: Portland is the first large US city to gain the designation and joins Davis, Calif as the only other Platinum BFC in the country. Highlights of the community include:

• Portland’s bikeway network includes 270 miles of on-street bike lanes, bike boulevards, and paved trails; another 40 miles of unpaved trails offer mountain biking opportunities in city parks.
• A city ordinance requires bike parking in new development and redevelopment projects; another provides a huge incentive for developers to provide showers and locker rooms.
• Six bike corrals have been installed, each replacing one on-street car parking space with 12 bicycle spaces.
• 400 bikeway destination signs have been installed (with 400 to come) on the bikeway network.
• More than 1,000 traffic offenders (including cyclists) have been through a two-hour “Share the Road” Safety Class.
• More than 400 bicycle light sets are distributed annually to low-income bicyclists by the city, Tri-Met (the transit agency) and the Community Cycling Center.
• 2,250 elementary students annually receive a 10-hour bicycle safety course as part of a larger Safer Routes to School initiative. The course is delivered by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and has helped increase bicycling to school by 5% in just one school year.
• The city distributes 35,000 citywide bicycle maps and another 35,000 local area maps. The citywide map is also reproduced in the Portland phone book.
• More than 9,100 people participated in the 2007 Bicycle Commuter Challenge, including 1,700 first-time bike commuters
• A Tri-Met survey found that three-fifths of area employment sites provide bike parking and ten percent offer incentives to bicycle.
• 20,000 participants in the Providence Bridge Pedal make Portland home to the second largest community bike ride in the United States (after Bike New York).
• 2,000 hardy riders fill the annual Worst Day of the Year ride in early February.
• The Bicycle Transportation Alliance boasts 3,000 members in the city and is just one of many advocacy and riding groups that organize thousands of rides, events and bicycling activities year-round.
• The city boasts 40 bike shops and more than 150 bicycle-related businesses that provide thousands of green-collar jobs and with an economic impact of more than $65 million (2005).

Most Signifcant Recent Accomplishment: Portland recently striped a “double-wide” bicycle lane to reflect the growing demand on one of their busiest corridors. Their bicycle use numbers reflect this, having experienced their third consecutive year of double-digit growth. The city auditor estimates that 16 percent of Portlanders use the bicycle as either their primary or secondary means of transportation to work.

The who’s who of bike friendly politicians and community leaders are slated for a 10 am press conference at the Downtown Bike Gallery (1001 SW Salmon). “Commissioner Sam Adams will be joined by Senator Ginny Burdick, Metro Council President David Bragdon, Bike Gallery owner Jay Graves, Oregon Transportation Commissioner Gail Achterman, Bicycle Transportation Alliance Executive Director Scott Bricker, business owner Chris King, Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer, and representatives from the offices of Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler and Congressman Earl Blumenaur,” according to the Portland Office of Transportation.

No doubt Adams and other local candidates with a bikey agenda will start incorporating this into their campaign message. (UPDATE: Damn, that was fast. Bike commuter and city council candidate Jim Middaugh already put out a statement. It’s after the jump.)