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.

Even at a bike organization, not everyone bikes all the time, especially in the winter. When I started as PeopleForBikes’ director of enterprise partnerships in 2021, I knew part of my role would be helping companies across the country find ways to engage and support more employees in bicycling. Thankfully, PeopleForBikes’ own staff felt like the perfect testing ground for this work. 

In December of 2021, we circulated a survey to better understand existing bike riding habits. Based on those survey results, a new employee benefit was developed, focused on encouraging more time spent on the bicycle. Dubbed “Bike Perks,” the ride encouragement program launched in January 2022.

The idea behind Bike Perks isn’t a new concept. Organizations have incentivized bike riding habits for decades. Historically, these programs focused on reducing car-based commutes for businesses with limited parking capacity. With some of PeopleForBikes staff working in different states, however, parking wasn’t a motivator and we developed our program with new goals in mind. 

Goal 1: Live out our mission to get more people biking more often. 

Goal 2: Encourage investment in the industry we serve.

Using the PeopleForBikes ride-recording and sharing platform, Ride Spot, internal ride challenges were created each month encouraging staff to bike 25 times. Those rides could be of any variety (i.e., exercise, transportation, leisure) and of any distance. Reducing the parameters on what type of rides count toward the monthly challenges not only made the program more inclusive but it also helped increase participation. For those unable to bike, for whatever reason, we offered alternative participation activities like yoga, physical therapy, or walking.

As an additional incentive, PeopleForBikes staff earned $4 for every ride logged using Ride Spot (up to $100/month). Staff could also double that incentive by submitting bike industry purchase receipts up to the amount they earned from riding — meaning an employee taking full advantage of the program could earn $2,400/year. Soon, staff were reaching for their bikes first when going to work out or running to the grocery store.

With a full year of Bike Perks behind us, we’re happy to report how the program has fared thus far. PeopleForBikes’ 2022 Bike Perks by the numbers:


7 staff members completed 100% of the 2022 challenges (a minimum of 300 trips)

83% of EOY survey respondents said the program changed their bike riding habits

At a glance, it would be easy to say the cash benefit is what motivated staff to participate in the program, and for a lot of people, it definitely played a role. However, we found there were many low and no-cost measures that also contributed to the success of the Bike Perks program. Here are a few key takeaways: 

Senior leadership should show support, promote, and participate in the program. Devoting a Slack channel to sharing ride stories can also help engage employees. 

Having a dedicated point person to answer questions and/or offer low-cost prizes can help keep staff informed and involved. 

Keep the challenges fun and topical. It’s important to change challenge parameters to fit the season.

If a formal ride encouragement program is something that would benefit your organization, you’re in luck! PeopleForBikes is ready to provide the software and programming to launch Bike Perks at your organization at no charge. Schedule a demo today to see how the program can improve the bike culture within your team. 

How PeopleForBikes Encourages Staff to Ride More

In many ways, Seattle is already a great city for bicycling. For the last two years, it’s ranked third among large U.S. cities in PeopleForBikes’ annual City Ratings. Plus, it’s also made significant network progress year over year: From 2020 to 2021, Seattle’s Bicycle Network Analysis score jumped from 53 to 58, thanks in part to nearly 10 new miles of protected bike lanes and trails.

Seattle’s Bicycle Master Plan lays out a vision for a connected network that includes 100 miles of protected bike lanes and nearly 250 miles of neighborhood greenways. When complete, every household will be within a quarter-mile of an all ages and all abilities bike facility. In order to ensure kids learn to ride, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) funds Cascade Bicycle Club’s Let’s Go school education programming. Although SDOT doesn’t have a firm date for network completion, Seattle committed to having 90% of all personal trips have zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, opening up substantial funding for bikes and allowing for the completion of critical infrastructure.

In recent years, SDOT prioritized infrastructure decisions based on safety, equity and connectivity, particularly in regard to building key bicycle connections to transit. Last year, the department also announced a historic new Transportation Equity Framework (TEF), the goal of which is to help reimagine the city’s streets and transportation system by addressing persistent economic, racial and social inequities in Seattle. Bike champions are also ubiquitous in the city, helping elevate safety concerns, advocate for connections from certain underserved neighborhoods or allocate funds for historically marginalized communities.

One such champion is the nonprofit Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, a coalition of 16 neighborhood-based, volunteer-led chapters working to make Seattle’s streets more livable. Seattle’s cost-saving strategy for building new bike infrastructure has been to do it in conjunction with other paving projects or by scooping funding from other projects that are already happening. The result has been a lot of great new bike infrastructure in small chunks that don’t necessarily connect. In 2021, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways developed UnGap the Map, an advocacy campaign focused on getting the city to fill the gaps in its bicycle network.

“It’s really frustrating because if you want to bike in Seattle, you still have to be comfortable mixing with traffic,” said Clara Cantor, a community organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. “There are these super comfortable bike routes that will just end abruptly and leave you stranded in a terrifying intersection with no clear direction on where you’re supposed to go.”

While a great bike route might pick up a few streets away, a lack of good wayfinding signage makes it difficult to find for those who aren’t familiar with the city’s bike infrastructure. Likewise, a route that requires riders to mix in traffic, even for a quarter-mile, can be a big deterrent for some and an insurmountable obstacle for others, including children.

“It’s scary and dangerous, but it's especially hard for new riders,” said Cantor. “It makes for a much more exclusive bike culture.”

Although Seattle Neighborhood Greenways focuses on pedestrian safety as well, the Ungap the Map campaign is solely focused on bikes. The crux of the campaign is a shortlist of 10 major gaps in the city’s bike network — corridors the organization has identified as the most important places for the city to tackle first. Since smaller neighborhood groups make up the larger organization, there are other grassroots efforts happening to push for the closing of gaps on the neighborhood level, but the 10 routes remain the organization’s main focus.

The UnGap the Map project is planning both long and short term. In the long term, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is working to influence the larger discussion with city planners around what a connected bike network looks like and how the city can get there. By changing the emphasis from how many bike lane miles are built to how many bike lane miles connect, advocates hope to create a city where people of all ages and abilities feel comfortable commuting exclusively by bike.

“Seattle is currently doing a big transportation plan update and we’re trying to influence that effort,” said Cantor. “We want to push the city to prioritize complete, connected routes, rather than keep building bits and pieces here and there.”

In the immediate term, the UnGap the Map campaign is focused on installing new wayfinding signage in order to help guide riders around Seattle, especially those that are new to biking or returning after a long time out of the saddle. In 2020, Seattle saw a 21-35% increase increase in the number of people riding bikes, and citywide, 60% of residents say they want to bike more but fear for their safety. The wayfinding signage, which will be installed across the city this summer, will help direct people through some of the existing gaps. Someone that comes to the end of a comfortable bikeway would reach a map that then points them to the best nearby routes.

“It’s not making people any safer but it’s helping them navigate through and find those routes that feel safer,” said Cantor, adding that for many people, that might include hopping up onto the sidewalk for a while.

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways settled on its list of 10 major gaps by prioritizing routes that connect different parts of the city, as well as accounting for safety and equity concerns. Four of the routes are what Cantor calls “citywide connectors,” or gaps that when filled would help people move around the city more efficiently. The other six are equity-focused routes that would majorly benefit the mostly South Seattle neighborhoods where they’re located, places with higher BIPOC and low-income populations that have historically been ignored when it comes to infrastructure investments.

Although none of the gaps have been filled yet, there has been significant progress on some of them. One is the “Beacon Ave. South” route, which would connect Seattle’s downtown to the entirety of its southeastern portion. The northern section of that route is currently funded and SDOT is working on design, with construction anticipated to begin in 2023 (the southern portion has yet to be funded but it’s on the city’s shortlist).

Another major connection, the “Georgetown” route, could bridge the Georgetown neighborhood to downtown through the SoDo neighborhood. Zoned industrial, every street in SoDo is wide and built to accommodate freight. Without a single safe bike corridor, SoDo is unsurprisingly dangerous to ride through and injuries and fatalities are common — two bicyclists have been killed there in 2022 alone. Because of the fatalities, SDOT is prioritizing this project and hopes to have it completed by the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024.

“It still seems really far out but it’s closer than it ever has been,” said Cantor.

In fall 2021, PeopleForBikes awarded Seattle Neighborhood Greenways a $10,000 grant to support the organization’s advocacy work, outreach efforts, wayfinding signage and long-term planning. The emphasis on connectivity directly aligns with PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings system, which — recognizing that most people are only interested in biking when it's a comfortable experience — prioritizes low-stress biking connections and how well bike networks connect people with the places they want to go.

While Seattle has made significant progress in recent years and remains one of the best places to bike in the U.S., there’s still room for improvement when it comes to connectivity. According to Cantor, many bike infrastructure projects get heavily compromised before completion by stopping shy of a major intersection, not quite reaching a destination or being built with protection only in one direction. Compromising on individual projects can harm the connectivity of a network, as well as interrupt ambitious mode shift goals.

“If our goal is to have more people biking, that actually won’t happen if it feels the way it currently feels to bike,” said Cantor. “You have to make it comfortable, efficient and joyful or people are going to try it once and not come back.”

In 2020, traffic fatalities in the Memphis area were up 50% compared to the year prior and they’ve only continued to climb, echoing national trends. To choose to bike or walk in such an environment can be dangerous and sometimes life-threatening, a fact not lost on the city’s transportation planners. What’s more, traffic fatalities and collisions aren’t the only car-related issues in Memphis: The city also happens to have a big problem with illegally dumped tires.

In early 2020, Laura Murray, a former Alta Planning + Design employee, had an idea to help tackle both issues at once. Murray found a local industrial artist, Tad Pierson, who’d been using tires as an art medium for more than a decade. The pair worked together on a novel concept — transforming old tires into new bike lane barriers — which they eventually pitched to the City of Memphis. 

While the city was interested, it wasn’t able to fund a pilot and encouraged Murray and Pierson to find a nonprofit or community development corporation to collaborate with on a trial installation. They found both in the Binghampton Development Corporation (BDC), a nonprofit working to improve the quality of life in the Binghampton community, a historically disinvested neighborhood in central Memphis. In Binghampton, some 35% of residents live below the poverty level and the majority of folks identify as Black or people of color. The community also has a large immigrant population — 17 countries of origin exist amongst its 12,000 residents — and it’s common for new refugees to settle there. 

The BDC has been active in the neighborhood since 2003 when it began pursuing a revitalization strategy through housing and economic development, as well as empowerment programs for those plagued by issues of systemic poverty. In addition to developing physical assets, like parks and neighborhood commercial services, and providing affordable rental and homeownership opportunities, the BDC invests in people through mentorship programs and hard- and soft-skill training for youth and adults. 

Murray and Pierson’s timing was serendipitous. When they approached the BDC with their idea to build bike lane barriers using old tires, the organization was actively looking for warehouse-based opportunities for its job training program. As part of the roughly six-month-long, paid, full-time training and development program, BDC employees work on projects that range from mattress recycling to warehousing for trucking companies. After securing additional funding — some of which came from PeopleForBikes, alongside the Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation, the Cummins Foundation, and the City of Memphis — BDC ran with the tire project.

“We had enough funding to pay for the equipment and our trainee’s labor for about 400 bike lane barriers made using the old tires,” said Andy Kizzee, director of the BDC’s business hub. “We manufactured in November and December [2021] and have been monitoring since.”

Employees working on the tire pilot have been involved in all stages of the process, from stripping down, shaping, and painting the tires to anchoring them to the road along a one-mile stretch of unprotected bike lane in Binghampton. Since installation, the tires have been monitored for traffic impacts, and different designs, paint methods, and anchoring techniques have been tested. Installation was completed in February 2022 and although the evaluation process will last a full year, so far less than 10 of the 400 barriers have detached from the roadway (those few that did were due to instances of extreme heat). 

For Nicholas Oyler, bikeway and pedestrian program manager at the City of Memphis, the pilot has gone better than expected. The tire barriers are a low-cost alternative to flex posts, which are essentially plastic poles that delineate between a bike lane and traffic lanes. As almost any city planner can attest to, installing flex posts often results in lots of grievances from residents, mostly for aesthetic reasons. Oyler thought the tire barriers might elicit similar ire, but he’s been pleasantly surprised. 

“I’ve received no negative complaints at all for any aspect of the tire barriers,” said Oyler. “I’ve actually received requests from people in other neighborhoods asking for the tires to be installed on their streets. What better measurement of success is there, in terms of a public reaction than people asking for them?”

While the tire barriers have held up well to impact, no one involved in the project would argue that a tire is actually going to stop a car. As with a flex post, if a driver is moving fast enough and makes a mistake, no low-cost barrier stands a chance. 

“A concrete, raised median would be best — that would be true protection — but until we have funding to do that everywhere that’s needed, cities need a low-cost temporary alternative,” said Oyler. “Not only are the tire barriers locally sourced, but they have the added benefit of collecting discarded trash, reducing blight, and, through the workforce development program, providing an opportunity for people to improve their lives.”

The BDC job training program was specifically designed for people who fall into common “can’t work” or “won’t work” scenarios. This includes folks with a legal history and/or substance abuse issues, as well as people who have simply never worked before or lack the transportation options necessary to maintain a job. The BDC warehouse only employs local residents, and thanks to its central location in the Binghampton neighborhood, allows employees to commute by foot.

The tire project itself is particularly well-suited to the training program. First, the machine used to cut the tires is safe, a must for a learning environment with high turnover. The process of shaping, painting, and installing the tires also exposes trainees to a wide variety of different work tasks, which are both marketable and easy to learn. 

“It’s perfect job training content,” said Kizzee, adding that the trainees have done a great job. “We’ve been pretty pleased with the product — it’s on par with the other commercially made [barrier] products.”

While Kizzee believes there’s still some room for improvement, other cities are already taking note. He recently presented the project alongside Oyler at this year’s Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals conference, resulting in a lot of exciting feedback from planners and city officials, especially those located in Sunbelt states (since the tire barriers are easily concealed by snow, they’re not well-suited to colder environments). Kizzee and the BDC are now exploring the possibility of selling the tire barriers to other cities and/or open-sourcing the concept for cities that want to do it on a smaller scale. 

“If this was up and running and we were constantly getting orders, we’d be able to make 500-700 tire barriers a month — that would mean 3-5 training positions committed just to this one product,” said Kizzee. “We’re pretty pleased with that.”

While the pilot is still ongoing, there are plans to secure additional funding and expand to other bike lanes in Memphis. For Oyler, the project is all about finding a new purpose: for our tires, for our streets, and even for people. It’s a great example of what local government and community organizations can do when they partner together and take a risk. Memphis, having deadly streets and being resource-limited, was the perfect place for an out-of-the-box idea to flourish.

“This idea could have died but, because of the context we’re in, we have to be open to taking new approaches and trying things that are different,” said Oyler. “When you have a credible community partner wanting to be at the table and help realize an idea like this, why not say ‘yes’ and make it happen?”

Transforming Old Tires Into Bike Lane Barriers

In 2008, Tony Jordan’s car broke down and he decided not to replace it. Despite being parents to a two-year-old, Jordan and his wife adjusted to a car-free lifestyle in their Portland, Oregon, home, using Zipcar when they needed it but mostly relying on bikes, transit and their own two feet. A few years later, when he came across “The High Cost of Free Parking,” an 800-page book by Donald C. Shoup, Jordan was already primed to buy it and read the whole thing.

“The book really breaks down why we have parking requirements, how they're based on bogus science, how much it costs and what the impact on housing is,” said Jordan, who was working at the time as a software engineer. “As someone who had a car until not too far before and then read this book — it was something I had never thought about deeply.”

Few U.S. residents think that deeply about parking, other than to complain when we can’t find a spot. For those who own a car, parking can seem like an American right — an ever-present storage space, built free of charge, in the streets in front of our homes or when we drive anywhere in town. When it comes to other personal items, however, we don’t feel like our municipalities are obligated to help us store them. So what makes cars any different?

For one, our cities have long been designed around cars, making their use all but an inevitability except for in the few cities that boast robust transit systems, good sidewalks and complete bike networks. Most places in the U.S. also have had parking requirements — ratios of how many parking spaces each building needs to have — since the 1950s, and few people have the time to read a textbook on the topic. When Jordan finished “The High Cost of Free Parking,” he was able to finally make the connection between parking mandates and other objectively negative facets of modern American society.

“Free parking has had a big impact on a lot of the things — from climate change to housing costs — that aren’t going well,” said Jordan. “I found myself asking, ‘Why doesn’t anyone know this?’”

Jordan, who has a degree in politics and a background in organizing, began looking into Portland’s parking policy and was pleasantly surprised to find the city had begun eliminating parking requirements on certain corridors. However, when a handful of residents spoke up against the move, the mandates were eventually reinstated in 2013. That loss only drove Jordan to do more organizing and coalition-building around the issue.

In time, as things in Portland started to improve, Jordan set his sights on a national effort to help disseminate learnings and scale parking reform efforts across the country. The Parking Reform Network (PRN) quietly launched in March 2020 and has grown organically since. This year, PRN debuted a Mandates Map, which tracks parking reform initiatives throughout the U.S. and Canada. The group also operates a weekly newsletter, which culls parking-related headlines from across the internet, highlighting case studies, pertinent webinars and timely bills.

As this Parking Reform Network illustration shows, parking directly affects how much housing we can build.

Reading that newsletter, it becomes clear that parking reform is something that cities big and small are increasingly taking action on, from Sand Point, ID (pop. 8,692) to Ann Arbor, MI (pop. 121,093) to San Jose, CA (pop. 1.029 million). For Catie Gould, a climate and transportation researcher at the Sightline Institute, the growing groundswell of support to reform parking mandates isn’t surprising. “There’s a pretty broad consensus that parking minimums have been a disaster — one of the worst decisions made in North America,” said Gould. “And we’re just now starting to undo the damage.”

As Gould frequently touches on in her writing, required parking takes away from the buildable area of any given site, often resulting in fewer homes and less space for the playgrounds, gardens and walking paths that make communities more livable. Parking is also expensive for new developers to build — it can cost between $40,000 and $60,000 per parking space — which can increase residential housing costs for everyone and take valuable space away from the developable envelope of entitlement space. 

What’s more, fewer homes have led to a slew of other intersecting issues: a nationwide housing shortage, an increase in home prices and growing inequity. Lower-income families who drive less and use transit more inevitably end up paying for infrastructure they don’t need while drivers are subsidized for their car use. 

When parking is required, buildings are forced to spread further and further apart, decreasing an area’s walkability and leading to urban sprawl, which swallows more and more land to sustain the same population. This in turn pushes people to drive more, upping greenhouse gas emissions, while the ensuing traffic makes it harder for everyone to get where they need to go. Bigger impenetrable areas, like parking lots made of asphalt or concrete, likewise amplify the effects of urban heat islands, making a bad situation worse.

“Today, in most cities, it’s illegal to build downtowns in the way that we associate with them, with lots of buildings being close together,” said Gould, noting that these are often the places you bring visitors and that add to the charm of any destination. “Those places are now in non-compliance with the current code and that code is why our suburbs look the way they do.”

We also don’t need any more parking: By some estimates, there are as many as 2 billion parking spots in the U.S., meaning that there are eight parking spaces for every car. To continue mandating parking just doesn’t make sense. 

“All of the best data out there shows that parking is a terrible investment for a city,” said John Bauters, the mayor of Emeryville, California, a small Bay Area city that made the decision to institute widespread reforms. “For us, it made a lot of sense to not have some conscripted amount of parking be required, but instead to give developers, and housing developers in particular, the freedom to design and build something at a more affordable cost that provides a net social benefit to the community and does not further exacerbate our cost of living housing costs and climate issues.”

A better investment, in the eyes of Bauters and many transportation advocates, is a network of protected bike lanes and multi-use paths. His strategy in Emeryville has been to eliminate street parking, immediately turn it into active space and then show how much people use it. Less parking means more proximity — since most people only want to bike one or two miles, the more destinations you have in that radius, the better a place becomes for bicycling. That’s only possible, however, if you’re not required to build big parking lots.

“The problem is we have deprived people for a very long time of any meaningful alternative or choice,” said Bauters. “The reason people expect to move in their cars is that everything has been built for a car. If you want to get people out of a car — whether that be mass transit, walking, biking, scooting, skating, blading, whatever that is — you have to give people a healthy alternative.”

Bauters has seen firsthand how fast people are to adapt their transportation movements, mostly because they have no choice but to figure out how to get from point A to point B. Changing behaviors, however, starts with cities first changing on-the-ground infrastructure. One of the projects Bauters is most proud of is Doyle Street, which runs parallel to two streets designed for car traffic. With a redesign, southbound traffic and parking were eliminated on Doyle Street, essentially transforming it into a pedestrian and bike-friendly zone.

A shot of Doyle Street in Emeryville, California, where a pandemic quick-build was made permanent.

“You don’t have to close the whole street to get cars off of it, you just have to make it undesirable,” said Bauters, adding that in time, the street has become a place for safe movement with virtually no traffic. “We’re changing behaviors.”

Emeryville also launched its own demand-based paid parking program to curb driving. When it comes to prospective development, builders are always shown the city’s robust active transportation plan and, as part of their mitigation efforts, are required to pay into it or pay to build something that supports it. Other times, say if a developer needs more parking in order to obtain financing for a project, Bauters might allow them to add a second story to their parking structure but in exchange, require them to get rid of all the parking on city streets around the project, paying to turn it all into separated bike lanes. In a small city (Emeryville is home to less than 12,000 people), those sorts of negotiations are made easier but that’s not to say they couldn’t be done on a larger scale. 

“People buy into the vision because they actually find that their businesses and employees like it,” said Bauters.

In 2020, Seattle was the fastest-growing city in the U.S., with more than 740,000 people. In 2017, Seattle waived or halved off-street parking mandates for new housing near transit, which in turn led to more housing being built and more people moving in. More people in a smaller area leads to more businesses and money being spent, a reinforcing cycle. The revision also contributed to big changes in travel to downtown Seattle: Between 2000 and 2016, transit, walking, biking and rideshare jumped from 50% to 70% of all trips taken in the city. During that same time, drive-alone trips decreased from 50% to 30%. 

There are many great examples of what less parking might mean for a city and bicycling — just look to Paris or Amsterdam, places where leadership understands that the only way to increase space for bikes is to decrease space for cars. Recently, the Filipino capital of Manila introduced a bill requiring car owners to show proof they have off-street parking before registering their vehicle, a move that hopes to mimic the success of nearby Japan’s proof-of-parking law, which all but bans on-street parking. 

In the U.S., more and more cities continue to eliminate their parking requirements each week, and the issue has been making national headlines, thanks to a recent bill in California (AB-2097) that would reform parking mandates near public transit statewide. Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon also recently introduced Parking Cash Out Legislation, which would require employers to offer a parking cash out option to employees who are otherwise offered a parking benefit.

Getting people passionate about parking, however, is difficult, especially when driving is the easiest way of getting around and parking remains free and abundant. It’s a politically ripe topic and people tend to have a lot of very strong feelings, especially when it comes to parking on their neighborhood block. As a politician, Bauters is on the receiving end of a lot of folks’ opinions on parking — his strategy is to relate to people in the way they’re relating to him: with emotion. 

“I don't ask them to get out of the car, I don't tell them they're burning the planet, I don't tell them that they're a risk to everybody who's in a crosswalk — I don't blame them for anything,” said Bauters. “But what I don't do is I don't apologize for prioritizing everybody's well-being, not just theirs.”

It’s in the best interest of the collective good to start doing things differently, and that requires bold action when it comes to eliminating parking mandates and building the sorts of connected bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly networks that offer people safe, convenient alternatives to driving. 

“If you can only move in a car, people don't imagine or believe that they can do anything else,” said Bauters. “You have to take space back to give people the chance to do that safely — and the first thing that should go is always parking.”

Parking Reform is Key to Building Bike-Friendly Cities

I did not grow up in a place where taking public transportation or riding a bike was common. In fact, taking the bus or riding a bike was sure to draw every ignorant, hurtful comment you can think of, from “Oh, that person must have a DUI,” to “They must be poor.” It was a place where getting around in any way other than a personal car was looked down on. Unfortunately, in the U.S., it’s not an outlier. Cars are idolized and prioritized in this country, something that’s only reinforced by the fact that our cities and towns have been built to facilitate personal car ownership and make living without one difficult.

For almost a century now, cars have been equated with worth and desirability — they’ve also become increasingly necessary for accessing daily basic needs. Unlike car ownership, which is subsidized by unfettered access to gas and abundant parking, our public transportation systems are expensive. For many, they’re also difficult to access and can leave people feeling vulnerable and without dignity. If you can afford to use it, transit still often falls short when it comes to being able to efficiently access jobs, grocery stores, doctor’s appointments, or even school. Likewise, if you can afford to live in a walkable neighborhood or own and maintain a bicycle, you still might feel unsafe due to a lack of safe and connected infrastructure.

Still, many people are dependent on public transportation, biking, and walking to access their basic needs and that percentage rises if we’re talking about people of color or low-income populations. We also know that one in four U.S. adults experiences transportation insecurity, which has far-reaching effects. People experiencing transportation insecurity might not be able to keep a job, get to school, pick up their children, or bring home groceries. Mobility is a fundamental human right and it’s necessary for a healthy economy. This is why we need Guaranteed Basic Mobility (GBM), also known as Universal Basic Mobility. 

GBM is based on the idea that every person should have the resources they need to meet their basic transportation needs. In practice, it means economic mobility. In this country, the less money you make, the more you spend on transportation, making it difficult to escape poverty. Having access to affordable, reliable public transportation is a way to help reduce poverty and boost our economy. GBM recognizes the need to move freely and participate in society as a basic right, just one part of a staple of services provided by taxpayer dollars and the government. 

My desire to see GBM take hold nationwide is not unique. The concept has been considered for years and was the focus of a panel that I recently moderated for the 2022 Designing Cities Conference, hosted by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) in Boston last month. It was a privilege to share the stage with two forward-thinking and creative women: Kim Lucas, senior project manager at the City of Pittsburgh, and Seleta Reynolds, chief innovation officer with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (previously, she was general manager at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation). Both have worked hard to make Guaranteed Basic Mobility a reality in their respective cities. 

In August 2022, Pittsburgh launched its Guaranteed Basic Mobility Research pilot program, which will provide up to 100 low-income residents with six-month access to all of the participating modes of transportation in Move PGH, a mobility-as-a-service collective that includes shared micromobility, car share, and transit. Los Angeles launched its pilot Universal Basic Mobility program in April 2022, offering residents in South L.A. a variety of mobility options for free or at a reduced cost.

For Lucas in Pittsburgh, the pilot is about breaking down the final barrier to mobility: cost. Some 20% of households in the city do not own a car. The pilot is helping people get where they need to go as affordably as possible by providing select residents with free and easy access to all mobility options. These options include but are not limited to the bus, ZipCar, and POGOH bike share. The year-long pilot is focused on the Manchester and Chateau neighborhoods, which have a median income 14% below the city as a whole. The pilot is funded by a $200,000 grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, as well as shared micromobility company Spin, which committed an additional $50,000 to the project.

For Reynolds, the Los Angeles pilot is about reducing poverty. South L.A. has a high proportion of households below the poverty line, as well as a large share of residents who rely on public transit (its population is also a majority people of color). Mobility options available to residents include an electric bicycle lending library, an on-demand community electric shuttle bus, an expanded electric vehicle sharing program, and a “mobility wallet” that provides a $150 monthly transportation subsidy to 2,000 residents. Funding for L.A.’s pilot comes from a STEP grant from the State of California Climate Investment Program and the City of Los Angeles, which approved an additional $4 million to enhance the pilot program for a total of $17.8 million. 

Los Angeles and Pittsburgh aren’t the only cities experimenting with UBM concepts, although pilots remain rare. Other examples include a pilot program in East Oakland, California, which launched in November 2020 with 500 prepaid cards that could be used for public transit, bike share, and e-scooters. The final report highlights the program's positive impact and a second pilot is currently underway. Another California program, launched in Bakersfield in 2021, was designed to reduce barriers to job access. The 12-month pilot provided free rides on Spin e-scooters or e-bikes to 100 disadvantaged youth aged 18 to 24. 

Speaking with Lucas and Reynolds, one thing that stood out was their belief that we need to reframe how we think about mobility. Like most things in the U.S., mobility has long been thought of as a way to make money rather than a human right. Transportation and mobility should be thought of and implemented as a service — as a means of investing in people and their ability to achieve success in this country. Only once this mindset takes hold can Guaranteed Basic Mobility truly become a reality. 

I hope that the California pilots, alongside the work being done in Pittsburgh, will help make the case for widespread adoption. I will wait with anticipation to read the final reports from Pittsburgh and L.A.’s research partners — Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Los Angeles, respectively — on how these pilots improved people’s economic, social, and health outcomes. While the learnings thus far are promising, we need to achieve a stockpile of data for more cities to follow suit. If more places adopt Guaranteed Basic Mobility, not only will people’s livelihoods improve but our communities will become more robust overall.

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Twenty years ago, the small, Northwest Arkansas city was relatively unknown. Today, it’s the mountain biking capital of the world.

Bentonville, Arkansas, tucked in the heart of the Ozarks in the northwest corner of the state, is probably most well known as the birthplace of Walmart. Over the last 15 years, however, thanks in large part to investments made by the Walmart-founding Walton family, the city has dubbed itself the “Mountain Biking Capital of the World.”

Some die-hard mountain bike enthusiasts may throw up their arms at that statement and say, “What about Moab, Whistler or (insert said enthusiast’s favorite local trails here)?!,” but those who have visited Bentonville can attest that the city has truly done an incredible job of growing a strong community of dedicated cyclists, all within recent memory.

For 2022, Bentonville ranked #1 in Community Score in PeopleForBikes’ annual City Ratings. The program, which evaluates, identifies and compares great places for biking, determines a city’s score by combining its Network Score, measuring the quality of a city’s bike network, and its Community Score, measuring how people feel about biking in their city. While the Network Score may be worth 80% of a city’s overall rating, the Community Score offers an important look into understanding local resident’s perceptions of bicycling where they live, work and play.

With a Bicycle Network Analysis score of 43 and an overall score of 48, Bentonville sits right on the cusp of being considered a great place to bike by City Ratings standards, with an overall score of 50 being that gateway to greatness. However, touting a Community Score of 70, the Northwest Arkansas hub offers many potent lessons on fostering a community of bike-minded residents. 

Bentonville’s journey began relatively recently, with the city’s first five miles of singletrack opening in 2007 on the north end of town. By 2010, those five miles grew to 17 miles, and the Slaughter Pen network of trails stretched further south, connecting to the heart of downtown Bentonville. Over the next 10 years, the region’s network of trails continued to expand, with 100 more miles of trails opening in Bella Vista, Bentonville’s northerly neighbor. Today, Northwest Arkansas is home to more than 500 miles of trails, stretching from Bella Vista to Eureka Springs.

But Bentonville’s success lies in more than just building miles and miles of trails — according to Gary Vernon, senior program officer for the Walton Family Foundation, the organization responsible for funding a majority of the trails across Northwest Arkansas, the key is building trails for all types of riders. 

“When the first few miles of trail were built, it wasn’t just a check written by a family foundation. Tom and Steuart [Walton] were out riding the trails in the community and building the trails that most benefited those who lived in the community,” said Vernon. “We wanted to build trails that connected communities, both physically and socially, and that are able to be enjoyed by riders of all skill levels. We wanted to get families out riding together that normally wouldn’t. Instead of packing up the car and driving a few hours to ride, you can roll out of your driveway in Bentonville and be at a trail in minutes. We like to say that the best trailhead in Bentonville is your garage.”

For Vernon, accessibility, connectivity and progression are the key pillars to introducing new riders and welcoming more people to the fun of mountain biking. “Just start with that first 10 miles of trail and build them in a way that there’s trails that are fun for all skill levels,” he said. “Build trails that parallel greenways so parents can ride on pavement alongside their kids riding dirt for the first time. You don’t need 150+ miles to be successful; if you have 10-15 miles of fun, connected trails, you can be successful.”

While Bentonville trails may lack the one-way distances of other mountain biking meccas out West or in the Northeast, Vernon also points to the “lapability” of local trails as another benefit to Bentonville’s success in growing riders’ confidence and love of biking. 

“Growing up, we would build one jump and hit it 1,000 times. That’s how we got better,” said Vernon, noting how Bentonville’s dedicated climbing tracks sprinkled throughout its trail networks make it easy to hit the same lines again and again and again. “You don’t get better by hitting a different jump every time you ride. Beginners can benefit so much from repetition, and when you can hit the same line five times in a row, you’re going to be a lot more confident on the bike because of it.”

Don’t just take Vernon’s word for it either — Bentonville’s investment in biking has proven to be instrumental in growing the number of residents who love to ride. Based on a 2021 survey conducted by PeopleForBikes, 26% of Benton County residents reported riding more than 35 days a year, placing them in the “enthusiastic rider” category. The study also found that a resounding 79% of residents either agree or strongly agree that bicycling is good for the community and 70% think that bicycling in their area has gotten better in the past three years. For any cities on the fence about community response to an investment in biking — hard work pays off. 

While Bentonville is still breaking ground on new off-road trails every year, the city’s biggest push now is turning all of that community support for recreational riding into support for more safety for on-road riding and biking for transportation.  

“We want to be the safest place in the Heartland to ride a bike,” said Hunter Garrison, Bentonville’s bike and pedestrian planner. “We want people to be able to access the entire city — trails, restaurants, bars, you name it — without ever having to get in their car.”

Bentonville’s first on-street protected bike lane is slated for completion later in 2022, and Garrison says changing the image of non-recreation biking is essential to continuing similar projects in the future. 

“In Bentonville, schools don’t provide access to a bus if you live within a mile of a school system. That means we have hundreds of kids biking to school,” said Garrison. “When all people see are adults in lycra, they don’t really care as much about those on-road facilities. When they see kids biking, they feel the need to support the creation of facilities that get them to school safely.”

Garrison also says that even if people don’t care about bikes, everyone cares about economic boosters, and it’s hard to look past what bikes have done for economic growth in Northwest Arkansas. In 2017, a study showed that bicycling brought $137 million in economic benefits to the region. Bicycling put Bentonville on the map, and with how cheap bike investments are compared to similar infrastructure projects, Garrison says you can’t prove a better civic investment when it comes to ROI than bikes. 

Building on the city’s efforts to improve biking for transportation, PeopleForBikes founded its Northwest Arkansas Bike Business Innovation program in 2020 to coordinate workplace programming, incentives and infrastructure changes to grow the number of employees riding bikes for commuting and transportation in Benton County. 

“This is an opportunity to build on the public sector and philanthropic investments in biking in the region as well as put a new lens on our work,” said John Paul Shaffer, PeopleForBikes’ Northwest Arkansas business innovation director. “We’re looking at the private sector with major employers in the area and how they can meet their own goals around sustainability and employee health while also supporting PeopleForBikes’ own mission of getting more people on bikes more often.”

PeopleForBikes is assisting Walmart, the largest employer in the region, in their goal of getting 10% of Home Office associates to commute to work by bike by 2023, and Shaffer thinks that’s just the beginning. “If we can expand that mission and get 10% of all Benton County residents to commute by bike, we can start rivaling the Portlands and other U.S. leaders in that space. That community of dedicated recreation riders already exists, now it’s working to build the infrastructure and culture to incentivize them to ride for transportation.”

There are many reasons why Bentonville is a great place to bike, but they all have one thing in common: community. By prioritizing investments that build and center a sense of community and lower barriers to entry, any city can welcome new riders and grow public support for bicycling.

Join PeopleForBikes in Bentonville October 18-20, 2022, for SHIFT'22 — a dynamic, peer-to-peer gathering surrounded by a can’t-miss week of bicycling events. By bringing current and future leaders together, we're moving the bicycle industry forward. Register and book your hotel today.

The Secret Behind Bentonville’s Success

In case you’ve missed the abundance of less-than-stellar headlines, the pandemic has coincided with a surge in car crashes and deaths. In fact, according to the New York Times, “The United States is enduring its most severe increase in traffic deaths since the 1940s.” Due to vehicle improvements, reductions in speed limits and a crackdown on drunk driving, crashes have declined since the 1960s — although lower-income and BIPOC communities continue to bear the brunt of the violence.

Fast forward to summer 2020. With fewer folks on the roads, aggressive driving became the norm. When more cars returned later in the pandemic, the trend in crashes continued to rise, and between 2019 and 2021 per capita vehicle deaths rose an astonishing 17.5%. The trend has impacted pedestrians as well as bicyclists, who make up a fifth of traffic deaths and are far more vulnerable to dangerous street design and aggressive driving. 

In 2014, Trisalyn Nelson, a geography professor and spatial data scientist, was biking when she had a near-miss with a car. It’s estimated that only 20 to 30% of crashes are officially reported, and even less than a decade ago there was no centralized reporting of crash data or near misses for bicyclists. If only a fraction of crashes are reported and you’re an urban planner or policymaker trying to prioritize investments in safer streets, the lack of good data makes it difficult to know where to start. 

“At the time, there was this growing popularity of using crowdsourcing to improve data on a bunch of things,” said Nelson, who was then teaching at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. “We really wanted to develop a system that would allow us to curate the individual rider’s experience to try and understand where safety issues occur and how we can better design our on-street infrastructure.”

Nelson, alongside colleagues from the Spatial Pattern Analysis & Research (SPAR) Lab, recruited developer Taylor Denouden and graduate student Ben Jestico to build BikeMaps.org, a data resource that maps bike safety outcomes as collisions or near misses. The primary national resource for mapping crashes, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data set, only counts crashes that involve a motor vehicle and a fatality. Some cities collect more comprehensive collision data independently, but there is no national source compiling city-level data. BikeMaps has emerged as one resource to help broaden the definition of safety data and fill in the gaps through crowdsourcing.

The system, which resembles Google Maps, allows a user to scroll to their city, find the location where an incident occurred, and drop a pin, prompting them to answer a series of questions.  

“We spent a lot of time working with bike safety researchers and city planners to try and figure out what kind of questions we should ask on the map,” said Nelson. “People can describe what happens and we get some really great descriptions.”

The product team also had developers layer in Strava ridership data, which helps researchers contextualize the safety data. For example, if one bicyclist out of 10 gets in a traffic collision on a street, the street is super unsafe. If one out of 1,000 bicyclists is involved in a crash, the crash risk is much lower. Since data on bicycling exposure is notoriously hard to obtain, BikeMaps turned to Strava to provide a sample of bicycling volumes. In conjunction with other data sources and correcting for any biases in the data, the team is able to paint a more accurate picture of the total number of riders in any given place at different times of the day.

Seed funding for the BikeMaps website was originally provided by the Canadian Automobile Association (Canada’s version of AAA), while the Public Health Agency of Canada invested heavily in its promotion to recruit crowdsourced contributions to the map. Today, Strava remains a close collaborator while funding comes from both Canadian and U.S. sources. Assorted staff, researchers and students maintain the site. BikeMaps.org is currently used in more than 40 countries in five different languages and a version for pedestrians and folks in wheelchairs is currently in the works.

In order to maintain a simple, easy-to-use interface, the website serves solely to crowdsource data rather than display all safety data, even in cases where other crash data is available, such as from police reports or hospital visits. However, the BikeMaps team conducts in-depth research and analysis when partnering with cities, collecting all available data and showcasing “hot spots” — or particularly dangerous areas for bicyclists. Transportation officials can then use the BikeMaps team’s analysis to prioritize infrastructure improvements in targeted areas. 

“We really want to help create access to bicycling by making cities safer,” said Nelson. “And the only way to do that is to really empower people making decisions to figure out where they should be making investments.”

The beauty of BikeMaps is that it serves as a call to action for everyday individuals who are passionate about bike safety data, allowing anyone to map their own experience and identify hazards. The project is always looking for champions within communities to advocate for bike safety and provides resources to share and encourage action locally. 

As a resource, BikeMaps complements PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) tool, which is a major component of our City Ratings. The BNA identifies low-stress bikeways and emphasizes connectivity, focusing on the need to build more high-quality, safe bike networks. BikeMaps focuses on specific safety incidents, which in conjunction with the BNA can help cities better prioritize infrastructure investments for safety and connectivity.

“It’s important to understand where you need to have investment but also where investment will lead to a more connected network,” said Nelson, noting that equity also needs to be considered. “We want to increase safety but with a focus on access. Who needs access to bicycling the most? People who have the least amount of choice in terms of their transportation modes.”

BikeMaps has submitted grant proposals to design and deploy an equity dashboard for transportation decision-making, but that’s still a work in process. Nelson acknowledges that some things — such as income levels and race percentages — are easy to quantify, but other factors that impact access will differ from community to community. 

“When it comes to that work, much of the decision-making needs to be done with community partners who are underserved,” said Nelson, emphasizing the need for partnerships between government, nonprofits, academia, and community-based organizations. “We need to make sure the voices we’re trying to serve are at the table and that we’re not just coming from the top down with ideas. But I think that will lead to new challenges around data and that’s where a team like mine can really come in and be helpful.”

Rebecca Davies, PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings program director, sees City Ratings and BikeMaps as complementary resources. She also welcomes additional bike data mapping tools, such as New Orleans’ bike equity index, which incorporates demographic data into bike planning, and Toole Design’s Safer Streets Priority Finder, which calculates injury and fatality risk based on a city’s historical data. In the absence of federal or state governments tracking equity, safety and connectivity information, planners looking to build better bike cities are often forced to create their own datasets or make decisions based on incomplete information. And while the U.S. Department of Transportation is starting to acknowledge the importance of data collection and analysis when it comes to road user safety, more work is needed.

“Ultimately, I hope that we get more complete data on bike infrastructure, ridership, and safety outcomes from the Federal Government,” said Davies. “Until measuring bicycling is a national priority, City Ratings and BikeMaps are two projects helping to fill those gaps.”

Pandemic-era changes to the built environment dramatically shifted the urban bike landscape. But if equity had been centered, would the numbers be higher?

In 2021, Santander Cycles, Transport for London’s bike share system, reported its busiest year to date. According to a recent press release, there were more than 10,900,000 bike hires last year and more than 1 million individual customers, 178,000 of which were new (a 7% increase over 2020 and more than double that of any year prior to 2020). By all accounts, it was a banner year for London bike share, echoing the larger increase in bicycling across the U.K. capital.

During the pandemic, the number of Londoners who bike jumped from 21% in 2019/20 to 27% in 2020/21. Participation also grew, particularly among minority communities and women. Additionally, Transport for London research shows that one in five people who don’t bike are open to starting, which could increase participation rates to more than 40%. In particular, more than half of Black and Asian non-bicyclists (49% and 46% respectively) reported that they were considering starting to bike.

London’s increase in bicycling can be directly attributed to its response to COVID-19, namely the ways in which the city prioritized new, equitable investments in infrastructure. In spring of 2020, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, released “Streetspace for London,” a detailed plan outlining projects and other initiatives to create more space for people to safely walk, bike, scoot and wheel their way around the city, helping to mitigate the effects of lockdown. The main projects were pretty simple: Build out a network of temporary bike lanes and routes, widen sidewalks and create 70 new Low-Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs) by restricting vehicle traffic on low-speed side streets.

These changes transformed the city, which has a population of almost 9 million. Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner, shared that the city saw a 200% increase in bicycling compared to pre-pandemic numbers, touting the 100 kilometers (62 miles) of new bike lanes and LTNs as major reasons for the increased ridership. While both the new lane miles and the LTNs have proved popular, there were questions about the equitable distributions of the LTNs (in most cases, critiques centered around the lack of public outreach and not the creation of the LTN itself). 

A study published in October 2021 found that “LTN implementation has been broadly equitable at the city and micro levels, but the picture is more mixed at the district level, despite districts being encouraged to consider deprivation when planning LTN locations.” What the researchers concluded feels obvious, but is far from a given when it comes to city planning: Continuing to monitor the distribution of infrastructure changes among different demographics will only help planners to improve equity.

A different study credited COVID-era pop-up bike lanes with an 11-48% increase in bicycling trips in cities across Europe. While safe networks of bike infrastructure are crucial to increasing mode shift — especially for women and other underrepresented groups — evaluating their impact is often difficult due to the glacial pace at which most cities tend to operate. The quick roll-out of pop-up bike lanes in European cities presented a unique empirical opportunity to estimate the effect of new bicycling infrastructure. It only makes sense then that an increase in bike lanes, especially protected bike lanes, would also benefit bike share.

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