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With more protected bike lanes and low-stress bike networks being built across the country than ever before, we had a tough time picking this past year’s best new bike lanes. While numerous projects deserve recognition, we rounded up the top nine projects worth emulating. 

9. Marin Boulevard Bikeway
Hoboken and Jersey City, New Jersey



In November, Jersey City and Hoboken completed construction on the Marin Boulevard and Henderson Street bikeway, which was first called for in the “Let's Ride JC Bike Master Plan” as a way to better connect the two cities. The expansion of CitiBike into Hoboken also increased demand to ride between the two cities, says Mike Lydon of Street Plans, who worked on the project’s design. In 2022, CitiBike’s most popular route was between Hoboken Terminal and Jersey City’s Hoboken Avenue and Monmouth Street, which saw a total of 5,500 bike share trips. With the completion of the Marin Boulevard project, those rides can now be made entirely on protected bike lanes.

The bikeway is separated from traffic with plastic curbing and flexible posts, and it includes a textured painted surface that makes the bikeway more visible and improves traction. As a “quick build” project, the cities chose to move forward with somewhat temporary materials to expedite the project and improve safety, something that wouldn’t have been feasible with more permanent materials that require sidewalk reconstruction and drainage work, not to mention a longer timeline. According to Lyndsey Scofield, senior transportation planner of Jersey City, this approach “provides us with more flexibility to iterate on the design over time as we learn what works well and what could be improved.”

After being declared one of Rhode Island’s most dangerous streets, Providence worked with the local community to reimagine Broad Street with protected bike lanes, bus islands, and crosswalk improvements. While balancing the needs of local businesses, bus riders, and people walking and biking, Broad Street now serves as a key component of the city’s Urban Trail Network, improving safety and accessibility for some of the city’s poorest and most diverse neighborhoods to jobs and opportunities citywide, as well as access to three major urban parks and multiple regional trails. Space for the bikeway was created by removing a wide center turn lane, which also helped reduce speeding along the street. 

7. Green Lake Outer Loop
Seattle, Washington

By converting a state highway lane into a two-way protected bike lane, Seattle created a new connection between Green Lake — one of the city’s most popular parks — and neighborhoods to the west. It also improved safety along the notoriously dangerous Aurora Avenue. As part of the project, precast concrete jersey barriers, which were repurposed from a nearby bridge repair project, were used to provide ample protection from adjacent motor vehicles. They also helped accelerate the construction of the project due to their immediate availability. 

According to Brock Howell, a member of the local advocacy group Aurora Reimagined Coalition, one of the primary goals of the project was to provide families the ability to ride around the park’s entire outer loop. The group hopes these improvements are a first phase in what will eventually become a completely redesigned Aurora Avenue, which stretches more than 10 miles from the Seattle-Shoreline border to downtown. “We have more work to do to improve safety along the rest of Aurora Ave North,” says Seattle Department of Transportation Director Greg Spotts, “But we expect this project to lead to safer speeds near Green Lake.” 

6. Hub City Hopper Trail
Spartanburg, South Carolina

As part of the larger 50-mile Daniel Morgan Trail System, the Hub City Hopper Trail — an extension of the Mary Black Rail Trail — demonstrates the benefits of connecting trails to town centers and urban areas. The project makes streets safer for people walking and biking while expanding access to recreational riding opportunities. It’s a trend we hope to see more of in urban and rural areas alike. 

The trail extension is already attracting new development to Spartanburg: A 132-unit housing project, the Fitzgerald, was planned by developers, in part, to take advantage of the city’s investment in the trail extension. In a recent WSPA feature on the project, John Montgomery, chair of the Daniel Morgan Committee, noted that they expect “to continue to see development pop up around the trail, [including] more residential, more apartments, because people see the value in trails and connecting them and promoting health and wellness. It’s a real community builder.” 

In 2021, Spartanburg County received a $23.8 million U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) RAISE grant — one of largest grants awarded by USDOT that year — to install more than 14 miles of multi-use trails and a new bicycle and pedestrian bridge as part of the Daniel Morgan Trail System.

Although it was technically completed in late 2021, we couldn’t resist putting Bloomington’s new 7-Line protected bike lane on our list for 2022. With a population of just under 80,000 people, the 7-Line proves that protected bike lanes aren’t just for big cities like New York or Los Angeles. The project connects downtown Bloomington with Indiana University’s campus and aims to increase bike ridership by providing a safe, comfortable place for people to ride.

In 2015, after Bike Portland called on the city to address a lack of safe space for people walking and biking along Naito Parkway and Waterfront Park, the city responded with improvements that provide plentiful safe space for people walking, biking, and rolling along the parkway. According to Gwen Shaw of Toole Design Group, the adjacent Waterfront Park “became busy with festivals and visitors during the summer months, making the existing conditions of no sidewalk and a standard bike lane a challenge.” Now, with a sidewalk, bi-directional protected bikeway, and pedestrian refuge islands, Naito Parkway offers a complete street that meets the needs of this busy area.

3. Bigelow Boulevard
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Bigelow Boulevard project, which was initiated and managed by the University of Pittsburgh, serves as an example of how institutions can invest in surrounding communities — to the benefit of both. According to Paul Supowitz, special assistant for strategic initiatives at the University of Pittsburgh, the project was driven by conflicts between various road users, congestion, and the need for better connectivity to the city’s bike network. 

Photo Credit: Matt Johnson, Montgomery County Department of Transportation

2. Capital Crescent Surface Trail
Bethesda, Maryland

When it was completed in November 2022, the Capital Crescent Surface Trail became the third project in Montgomery County to include a protected intersection. As part of a larger network, the project links downtown Bethesda to the nearby Capital Crescent Trail, an 11-mile paved and gravel trail that connects Bethesda with Georgetown and Silver Spring. According to Matt Johnson, capital project manager with the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, the two-phase project is part of a larger planning effort for the nearby Purple Line light rail project.

In April 2022, New York City announced plans to make the 34th Avenue Open Street permanent. (Photo Credit: John Surico)

One great way to make communities safer and more welcoming for people riding bicycles doesn’t even involve constructing new bike paths or bike lanes — simply remove cars from streets.

Although car-free streets have been a staple of people-centered spaces for decades, 2022 saw new examples come to fruition in communities across the country. San Francisco’s JFK Drive (which became permanent after voters rejected a ballot initiative to re-introduce cars), Beach Drive in Washington D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, and new car-free developments such as Culdesac in Tempe and Neighborhood Next in San Diego are all examples that advocates and elected officials should seek to emulate in their own communities. 

While many of these projects, including New York’s 34th Avenue, were spurred by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, cities are now moving to make them permanent, a trend unlikely to go away any time soon. Although some car-free streets were phased out of existence by many U.S. cities in the latter half of the 20th century, nearly all of those removals and declines can be attributed to other failed policies such as urban renewal, redlining, and auto-centric zoning. With these new wildly popular projects being integrated into low-stress bike networks, we think it's safe to say that car-free streets are making a comeback.

It was the late 1990s and I thought we were so clever. We had just convinced the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic to incorporate an innovative new design into its bike plan, a bold statement conveying “bikes belong” right there in the middle of the street. I had first seen a shared-use marking, or “sharrow” — a white bicycle painted directly on asphalt — in photos of Paris and Chicago, put there to help bicyclists get through intersections by indicating their path of travel. In 1993, James McKay, a bike planner in Denver, used it on a trial basis to emphasize a bicyclist’s right to ride in the middle of the lane. 

I was the young executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. We published a hard-hitting newsletter and organized leaders from businesses, churches, community organizations, youth groups, and more into a coalition that was giving unprecedented voice to the demands of San Franciscans for safer streets. Looking to those examples from Chicago, Paris, and Denver, we pushed to get an improved version of the sharrow design formally included in the city’s bike plan and approved for use by the state of California. Mayor Willie Brown famously painted the first sharrow on Grove Street outside of City Hall, getting some green paint on his fancy suit and laughing it off in his inimitable style. 

The City of Oakland, CA, experimented with this "super sharrow" on 40th Street in hopes that the symbol would be more effective if underlined by green pavement. It didn't work, and the USDOT did not approve the treatment.

San Francisco went on to paint thousands of these symbols all over its bike network, and hundreds of cities followed suit. I thought the sharrow would educate bicyclists to stay out of the “door zone”— the three or so feet of space adjacent to parked cars where motorists opening car doors and bicyclists could collide — and usher in a new era of safer streets, one where motorists would patiently wait behind bicyclists “taking the lane” because this painted symbol made it clear they had the right to do so. Where we couldn’t get a bike lane, I hoped this symbol would effectively convert the mixed-traffic lane into an adhoc bike lane when bicyclists were present.

It turns out that motorists really don’t like to wait behind someone on a bike, regardless of the paint on the street. Even Oakland’s experiment with the so-called “super sharrow,” where the bicycle path of travel is painted solid green, isn’t enough to get people on bikes to comfortably “take the lane.” Sharrow or no sharrow, most people on bikes dangerously hug the edge of the roadway, squeezing themselves into the door zone to avoid blocking car traffic.

Simply put, sharrows don’t do what we hoped they would. Studies back up that claim.

Early research in San Francisco and Florida showed evidence that behaviors changed slightly on streets with sharrows. For example, some bicycle riders positioned themselves a few inches further from the curb or car doors. A 2010 evaluation of shared lane markings in three separate cities again showed that the markings had some positive impact on behavior. Looking closely at the results, however, it was clear the changes were too minor to make a difference. After Oakland’s experiment with the super sharrow, the Federal Highway Administration announced it would not support future experiments, and Oakland does not plan to continue the treatment when it repaves the street. 

San Francisco still uses sharrows, but for the most part, city officials know better than to expect them to do much for safety. Today, beautiful sharrows point bicyclists along the circuitous path of the “wiggle,” where a right-left-right-left series of turns directs riders on a gentle grade between San Francisco’s steep hills. They are great for navigation and, perhaps, concentrating riders on certain streets — that’s about it.

Bright green arrows are useful for marking the zig-zag path that takes bicyclists across San Francisco while avoiding the steep hills.

It’s been more than 20 years since I had high hopes for the sharrow as a tool for safety. Today, we know so much more about what it takes to make our streets safer for bicycling. We need separate bike paths; we need protected bike lanes on busy roads; and where the lanes are shared, we need actual speeds reduced to 20 mph or slower. Sharrows don’t do any of that.

Sharrows do, however, accomplish something pernicious which I did not anticipate. They allow officials to take credit for doing something for bicycle safety without impacting car traffic, even though that something is next to nothing. It’s just pretending, and it’s worse than being honest about priorities. It’s insulting to the public to encourage bicycling by painting bike symbols on the street but doing nothing to actually make riding a bike any safer. 

Yes, good bike infrastructure can require tradeoffs that are more politically challenging than simply painting a symbol on the street. Now, at PeopleForBikes, I’m part of a team that has successfully helped cities build networks of bikeways that actually get more people riding safely and joyfully. We help city leaders with communications, organizing, and political strategies to overcome the challenges they will surely face in building truly effective infrastructure. 

We never suggest using sharrows to create a bikeway. We’ve learned our lessons. Now that we know better, it’s time to do more.

In the fall of 2021, PeopleForBikes, with the support of its Coalition board of directors, made the decision to double down on its data, statistics, and research program. After all, it’s nearly impossible to grow the number of bicyclists and the bike industry as a whole without having a firm grasp on things like participation trends and forecasting, the direct-to-consumer market, or an understanding of people’s proximity to recreational trails. For those that don’t often deal with research, however, sorting through charts, numbers, and analyses can quickly become overwhelming. That’s where “Inside the Outdoors” comes in.

A podcast produced by PeopleForBikes (PFB) and the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA), “Inside the Outdoors” isn’t just about bikes or data. The show features each organization’s chief data person, however, and episodes speak to larger trends in the outdoor industry, often with a special focus on bicycling. In each 20 to 30-minute episode, co-hosts Patrick Hogan, PFB’s senior research manager, and Kelly Davis, research director at the OIA, provide insights to help outdoor recreation-related companies grow their businesses.

“Inside the Outdoors” launched at the end of last year and has steadily released a new episode each week, available wherever you listen to podcasts. The name is meant to evoke the show’s mission: to peel back the curtain on the outdoor industry and help any listener understand what’s happening at the top level. As industry nonprofits, PFB and OIA want to welcome people at all levels to join in on industry happenings, ultimately leveraging the knowledge shared to help guide better business decisions.

“We are hoping that this medium will offer members of the outdoor recreation industry a way to easily access information about trends we're seeing,” says Hogan, who directs all of PFB’s research related to bicycling participation, market sales, and consumer insights. “In addition to conducting the research, PeopleForBikes is prioritizing new ways of communicating our findings with audiences, which is why we've chosen to begin podcasting.”

Since its launch in November, “Inside the Outdoors” has covered a variety of topics, some timely — an episode on 2022 holiday shopping, for example — and others more evergreen. The latter category includes an episode on what goes into forecasting and how it should influence business decisions (“Forecasting the Future”), as well as on the rise of direct-to-consumer sales (“Shifting Market Channels and the Rise of DTC”). Other episodes respond to bigger trends in outdoor recreation, like youth participation and social media. Curious about how outdoor recreation contributes to the U.S. economy? There’s an episode for that, too. 

“Only a few hundred individuals will travel to conferences and events for live presentations of research, and only a handful of people will open a 20-page PDF research report,” says Hogan. “This podcast helps us fill the gaps by serving up data to our audience in bite-sized chunks.”

It helps that Hogan and Davis are affable hosts — episodes are filled with witty banter, personal anecdotes, and a lot of “aha” moments. While many of the topics discussed are complex by nature, the show makes for easy listening. While the content will primarily appeal to brands, it offers a great deal of value to dealers, marketers, local clubs and organizations, and other types of groups making, selling, or using products related to the outdoors.

“The intended audience is really anyone working in the outdoor recreation industry,” says Hogan. “We are working to help folks access critical information and stay successful in an environment that is constantly changing.”

Tune into “Inside the Outdoors” on Spotify, Audible, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you stream content. New episodes drop on Mondays. 

PeopleForBikes Has a New, Data-Driven Podcast

Since 2019, Outride has proudly supported community nonprofits by committing more than $1.5 million in grant funding to more than 170 youth cycling projects across the country. Outride is excited to announce the opening of its 2023 Outride Fund grant application cycle, partnering with community nonprofits to promote bicycling as a tool to transform the lives of U.S.-based youth.

In order to create an immediate impact in communities across the country, the Outride Fund will now provide direct community grants. That means selected organizations are no longer required to contribute 1:1 matching funds, making it easier to apply and providing grant recipients more time to focus on the work they are doing.

“While matching grants were a good way to stoke community involvement in the fundraising process, we wanted to simplify the process for prospective grantees and lower the barrier to receiving funds,” says Chazz Robinson, program manager at the Outride Fund. “This change will allow awarded organizations to receive funds more quickly and start creating an impact on a more predictable timeline.”

Outride Fund grants will continue to support trails, pump tracks, rider education, workforce learning, after-school programs, and more, with a renewed focus on answering the question: “How can bicycling improve social, emotional, and cognitive health?” All nonprofit organizations that apply for a 2023 grant should consider this question in their proposal.

“One of the most incredible components of getting an Outride Fund grant is not only the impact that the funds provide, but also becoming a part of the Outride community,” says Tasha Tinagero, Outride’s strategic partnerships manager. “We have seen impressive impacts come out of cross-collaboration between our grantees and partners, which is something unique to our program within the cycling industry.”

The Outride Fund grant committee will carefully select grant recipients after evaluating applications on their alignment with Outride’s mission and research, an organization’s capacity to create impact, and their commitment to equity and access.  Outride Fund grant amounts vary depending on the project proposal but tend to fall between $5,000 and $15,000.  

What hasn’t changed in 2023 is the Outride Fund’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Not only does Outride hope to use its grant program to harness the power of cycling to improve lived experiences for youth, but it also wants to specifically target underrepresented demographic groups, ultimately helping to diversify the populations that participate in cycling. Vast disparities exist when it comes to accessing bicycling and its benefits for mental health — competitive proposals will demonstrate an intentional commitment to building equity and inclusion.

The 2023 application cycle is open through February 6, 2023, with Q&A webinars scheduled with Robinson on January 19 and 26. Please review Outride’s application guidelines and frequently asked questions before submitting. Grant award notifications and disbursements will be announced between March and April 2023.

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