Hendersonville Wants to Know Where You Ride: Inside the New 'Bike Hendo' Plan

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A cyclist named Alan Brooks pointed to a spot on the Ecusta Trail where it meets a road and said what a lot of riders in Hendersonville have been thinking. No lights. No button. Just a crossing where you wait, watch, and hope the timing works out.

That kind of observation is exactly what the City of Hendersonville is now asking for in writing. The city has launched a new bicycle master plan called Bike Hendo, and rather than handing residents a finished blueprint, planners are starting with three questions. Where do you currently bike? Where do you want to bike? And what makes biking here difficult?

If you ride a bike anywhere in Henderson County, or you have ever wanted to and decided the roads felt too risky, your answer to those questions now carries real weight.

What Bike Hendo Actually Is

Bike Hendo is a bicycle and "rolling" master plan, which is the city's way of saying it covers more than just road cyclists in spandex. It is meant for commuters, families, kids on the way to a friend's house, and anyone moving on two wheels for everyday trips.

The stated goal is to make Hendersonville safer, more connected, and more bike-friendly. That sounds simple, but the mechanics behind it matter. A plan like this is not just a wish list. Once the city council adopts it, Bike Hendo becomes an official guiding document for both the City of Hendersonville and the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

That distinction is the whole point. When a road project comes up, or a grant opportunity opens, or NCDOT is deciding where to spend limited dollars, an adopted plan gives the city something concrete to point to. It says this community studied the problem, gathered public input, and identified these priorities. Projects backed by an adopted plan tend to move forward. Projects without one tend to stall.

Matthew Manley, the city's Long-Range Planning Manager, has been the public face of the effort. "Bike Hendo will help us create a safer, more connected transportation network," he said when the plan was announced. He also made clear that the document only works if people participate. The plan needs to reflect where residents actually want to go and what stops them from getting there now.

The final plan is targeted for summer or fall of 2027, so this is the early, formative stage. The decisions about what to study and prioritize are taking shape right now.

Where the Process Stands Right Now

The work kicked off in May 2026 with a steering committee, and the public phase opened soon after. A volunteer group called the Pedal Committee is helping guide the process alongside city staff and a planning consultant, the firm McAdams.

The most visible moment so far was an in-person input meeting on June 25 at Trailside Brewing on Lennox Park Drive. The city ran it as a casual drop-in from 4 to 7 in the evening, and in a nice touch, anyone who biked to the event could enter a raffle. It was the kind of low-key, come-as-you-are gathering that tends to draw real residents rather than only the usual meeting regulars.

If you missed it, you have not missed your chance. The online survey is the main tool for the rest of the input window, and it is open through the end of July 2026 at publicinput.com/hendersonville-bike-plan. The survey walks through the same core questions: where you ride, where you want to ride, and what gets in the way.

This is the part worth emphasizing. Plans like this are easy to ignore until the construction starts, and by then the priorities are locked. The window where a single comment can shape what gets studied is short, and it is open right now.

The Ecusta Trail Changed Everything

You cannot understand why Bike Hendo exists without understanding the Ecusta Trail. The city was direct about it. The plan is explicitly designed to build on the trail's success.

The Ecusta Trail is a planned 19-mile rail-trail greenway, converting an old unused rail corridor into a paved path connecting Hendersonville all the way to Brevard. Along the way it threads through Laurel Park, Etowah, Horse Shoe, Penrose, and Pisgah Forest, stitching together a string of small Henderson and Transylvania County communities that have never had a safe off-road way to reach one another.

The first six-mile section opened in the summer of 2025, running from Hendersonville to Horse Shoe. The response was immediate. Roughly 6,800 people visited during opening weekend, and the trail has been pulling hundreds of daily users ever since. For a region where outdoor access is a core part of why people move here, that is a significant number.

Phase II, the stretch reaching all the way to Brevard, is targeting completion by late 2027 through a design-build approach. When it is finished, the trail will be one of the major recreational assets in Western North Carolina.

Here is the problem that Bike Hendo is trying to solve. A popular trail creates demand that spills onto the surrounding streets. People want to bike to the trail, not just on it. And the roads connecting neighborhoods to those trailheads were never designed with cyclists in mind. Success created a new set of safety gaps, and the plan is the city's attempt to close them.

What Residents Are Asking For

When you listen to the cyclists who showed up to comment, a clear pattern emerges, and it is not exotic. People are asking for the basics done well.

Protected bike lanes top the list. These are the lanes physically separated from car traffic, not just a painted stripe, and they are the most secure form of bike infrastructure. There is a meaningful difference between a line of paint and a real buffer, especially for a parent deciding whether their kid can ride to school.

Safer crossings come up again and again, which brings us back to Alan Brooks and that crossing with no lights and no button. Several Ecusta Trail road crossings currently lack signals, and riders are asking for signalized crossings, push-button signals, and proper lighting where the trail meets traffic. These are not glamorous projects, but they are the difference between a crossing that feels safe and one that does not.

The third theme is connection. Riders like Joey and Rhea Burnett, and e-bike commuters like Thomas Kreycik, want better bike-commuting links to the places they actually need to go, with infrastructure that holds up during peak commute hours rather than only on quiet weekend mornings.

None of this is a reach. It is the same conversation playing out in growing communities across the mountains, from Waynesville to Brevard to Sylva, as more people try to live the active, outdoor-centered life that drew them to this corner of the state in the first place.

The History Behind the Plan

Bike Hendo did not appear out of nowhere. Hendersonville has been working at this, in stages, for nearly twenty years.

It started with a 2007 Pedestrian Plan, the city's first real swing at active transportation, and the city actually had success implementing its recommendations. That track record matters, because it shows these plans are not just paper. Then the Hendersonville 2030 Comprehensive Plan recommended creating a dedicated bicycle plan, which set the stage for what came next.

That dedicated effort arrived as the 2017 Hendersonville Bicycle Plan, with a final draft dated August 2017. An NCDOT bicycle and pedestrian planning grant funded it, with a local match from the City of Hendersonville and the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club. A project team of planners, engineers, advocates, and ordinary citizens built it around a goal of serving "bike riders of all ages and abilities."

For context on how these grants work, NCDOT's planning grant program had awarded around 4.6 million dollars across 186 municipalities and two counties since 2004. Small mountain towns rarely fund this kind of study alone. The state partnership is what makes it possible.

Bike Hendo is the update and successor to that 2017 plan. The reason for a refresh is simple. The world changed underneath the old document. The Ecusta Trail was barely a concept when the city wrote the 2017 plan, and now it is the single biggest force reshaping how people ride in Henderson County. A plan from 2017 cannot account for a trail that opened in 2025.

This time the funding is coming through NCDOT's Integrated Mobility Division, again with local support from the city. The structure is familiar. The landscape it is responding to is brand new.

Why This Matters Beyond the Bike Lane

It is tempting to file a bicycle plan under niche interests, something for the cycling crowd and nobody else. The numbers argue otherwise.

Between 2021 and 2025, Hendersonville recorded 24 reported cyclist crashes, most resulting in injury. That is not an abstraction. That is real people on real streets, in a city small enough that those incidents ripple through the community. Earlier this year, Asheville City Council backed a proposed "Lennie's Law" honoring a cyclist killed in a 2025 crash, a reminder that the stakes here are not hypothetical anywhere in the region.

There is also a quality-of-life dimension that reaches well beyond Hendersonville. People move to Western North Carolina for a certain kind of life. Walkable downtowns, access to trails, the ability to spend a Saturday outdoors without driving an hour to do it. Safe, connected biking is part of that picture, and it shows up in the choices people make about where to put down roots.

Towns that invest in this infrastructure tend to see it pay off in foot traffic, small-business health, and the simple fact that a place feels more livable. The Ecusta Trail already proved the appetite is here. Bike Hendo is the attempt to make sure the streets around that appetite can keep up.

So if you live in Hendersonville, or anywhere nearby, the survey at publicinput.com/hendersonville-bike-plan is open through July, and a few minutes of your input genuinely shapes what gets built. And if you have ever found yourself paying closer attention to which mountain towns are quietly making themselves better places to live, I am always happy to talk about what that looks like across our corner of WNC.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Bike Hendo plan in Hendersonville?

Bike Hendo is a new bicycle and rolling master plan launched by the City of Hendersonville in 2026. Its goal is to make the city safer, more connected, and more bike-friendly for people riding for transportation, recreation, and daily errands. The plan asks residents three questions: where they currently bike, where they want to bike, and what makes biking difficult. Once adopted, targeted for summer or fall of 2027, it becomes a guiding document for both the city and NCDOT, directing future projects, policies, programs, and grant applications. It updates the city's earlier 2017 bicycle plan.

How can I give input on the Hendersonville bike plan?

The main way to weigh in right now is the online survey at publicinput.com/hendersonville-bike-plan, which is open through the end of July 2026. The survey asks where you ride, where you wish you could ride, and what currently makes biking feel unsafe or inconvenient. The city also held an in-person drop-in meeting at Trailside Brewing on June 25, 2026, and additional engagement opportunities are expected as the planning process continues into 2027. You do not need to be a regular cyclist to participate. Input from walkers, drivers, and parents is welcome too.

How does the Ecusta Trail connect to the Bike Hendo plan?

The Ecusta Trail is the centerpiece the plan is designed to build on. It is a planned 19-mile rail-trail greenway converting an unused rail corridor to connect Hendersonville to Brevard, passing through Laurel Park, Etowah, Horse Shoe, Penrose, and Pisgah Forest. The first six-mile section opened in summer 2025 and drew roughly 6,800 visitors during opening weekend. Phase II, reaching Brevard, targets completion by late 2027. Bike Hendo aims to connect neighborhoods and destinations to the trail and to fix road crossings that currently lack lights or signals, making the trail safer to reach.

Why does Hendersonville need a new bicycle plan now?

The cycling landscape in Henderson County has changed dramatically since the last plan was adopted in 2017, largely because of the Ecusta Trail. Thousands of new riders are now using local roads and crossings to reach the greenway, and some of those crossings lack lights or push-button signals. Safety is a real concern, with 24 reported cyclist crashes in Hendersonville between 2021 and 2025. A new plan lets the city document current conditions, prioritize protected bike lanes and safer crossings, and position itself for state and federal funding to actually build the improvements residents are asking for.