Amy Hartzog may not be a member of Bicycle Indiana, but she will definitely be at the statewide bicycling summit this weekend in Indianapolis.

Hartzog is a Greenway Associate Fort Wayne and on the planning committee shaping the city’s 10-year bike plan. A trip to the summit this weekend will provide information on what other cities have been doing with bike trails and routes.

Using information culled from a survey and a bike summit last spring, Fort Wayne is trying to take people’s desires and implement them into a bike master plan. They hope to have the plan ready to go by January.

Hartzog wants to bring back from the summit “new tools and knowledge to help with defining the bike network here in Fort Wayne, basically making Fort Wayne more bicycle friendly.” She is hoping to get information about what other communities have done … and apply what works here.

“We can certainly learn from other communities in Indiana to find out what is going on. … We like to plan with people, not just for people,” said Rachel Blakeman, city spokeswoman.

According to a news release from Bicycle Indiana, the summit keynote speaker, Krista Rettig, advocacy and governmental affairs director for Trek Bicycle Corp., will speak on how “a better place to bike makes a better place to live.”

Rettig is from Wisconsin, named the second-most bike-friendly state by the League of American Bicyclists. Indiana is in 29th place, down from 25th last year. Hartzog would like to change that. States are ranked according to policy, programs, evaluation and enforcement.

“I think it was our infrastructure that really caused us to have such a bad score. So possibly next year – with Fort Wayne having some paint on the ground for bike lanes this year and also designing a bike route, putting up bike racks and having three new league-certified instructors – we can … bump that score back up so we can at least be in the top half.”

She also hopes Fort Wayne can make changes to stand out in the state.

“I think something that Fort Wayne should aim for is getting an official bike- friendly designation,” Hartzog said. This is a designation that the League of American Bicyclists awards cities based on the following criteria: education, engineering, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation. Right now, only Bloomington and Carmel have this designation. Networking with cities at this weekend’s summit should give her more information on what works.

In addition to the keynote speaker, there will be seminars covering topics including everything from how to fit a bike to how to plan bicycle lanes.