As big cities across the U.S. continue to grow in size with inner-city congestion, many folks are looking to ditch the increasing crowds in favor of more up-and-coming locales. The following cities are great places to look to settle down because they are not only hubs of population growth, new employment and great culture, they also encourage an active and healthy lifestyle and back it up with investments in active transportation infrastructure!

Salt Lake City, Utah, has pretty much anything a millennial looking to settle down could want. It is affordable and quite LGBTQ+ friendly, it’s surrounded by one of the best natural playgrounds you could ask for, parks are abundant, home values are looking to grow in coming years and the city has started work on a 220-mile bike network. Known as the “Crossroads of the West,” Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 and is now home to nearly 190,000 people.

Currently, 50% of arterial streets and 56% of collector streets in town have some type of bike lane or bikeway. Since the city’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan passed in 2015, SLC has begun work on expanding this infrastructure to include 220 miles of bikeway and numerous facilities throughout the city.

Veering off paved paradise and into the sandy, desert dunes, there are mountain bike trails and bike parks galore! Visit the Bonneville Shoreline Trail for some fast and fun descents or hop on the Wasatch Crest trail for some 360-degree high alpine views. Salt Lake City is a growing gem of the Intermountain West. Unparalleled access to nature, expanding infrastructure, an active downtown and great culture make this mid-size town a great place to live and ride!

Missoula, Montana, also known as “The Garden City,” was founded in 1864 and is home to 74,822 people, making it the second-largest city in Montana. Missoula is located in the Northern Rockies of Montana, surrounded by seven wilderness areas and at the confluence of three rivers, making backyard views exceptional to say the least. Missoula is currently growing at a rate of 0.83% annually and to handle the growing need for transportation, the Missoula Bicycle Facilities Master Plan was adopted in 2017. Currently, there are more than 50 miles of shared-use paths and 37 miles of on-street bike lanes in town, with the new master plan aiming to expand infrastructure to 101 miles of shared-use paths, nearly 90 miles of on-street bike lanes and 31 miles of neighborhood greenways.

Transportation isn’t the only growing need, but thankfully Missoula is in the perfect place for a growing culture of recreation! MTB Missoula is a local organization that envisions a Missoula “where mountain bikers are the most thoughtful, informed and engaged group of users on the trail.” The organization helped build Missoula’s first public, bike-specific trails and manages more than 100 miles of local and backcountry singletrack. The most well-known are the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area and Marshall Mountain. The Rattlesnake National Recreation Area is what most people think of when mountain biking in Missoula comes to mind. It is a wild, smooth singletrack area directly north of downtown, offering great rides for all skill levels. Marshall Mountain caters to the more extreme riders, boasting a bunch of fast descents on an old ski hill — bumpy rides that are sure to get your adrenaline pumping. Missoula is the place to go if you are seeking your next mountain biking mecca!

Although it doesn’t quite make the “small-town” list with a population of 300,000, Saint Paul, Minnesota, certainly has the small-town feel. The city’s energetic community, historic interest, cultural landmarks and time-honored traditions make Saint Paul the historical and cultural heart of Minnesota. The beauty of this city isn’t just downtown — Saint Paul is home to more shoreline on the Mississippi River than any other city, offering up beautiful waterfront views wherever you go.

There are 207 miles of bicycle-friendly paths and roadways that connect the twin city. In 2015, the most recent Bicycle Plan of Saint Paul was adopted, which recommended an additional 140 miles throughout the current network to create more cohesive routes. If the accessibility wasn’t enough to get you excited, the Saint Paul Classic will! A community-driven race that offers routes for all skill levels, the Saint Paul Classic also includes extremely scenic rest stops to highlight the charm of the city along the way. The event attracts nearly 2,500 riders and hundreds of fans every year. For those seeking more adventure, there are opportunities to race down fun descents at Battlecreek Park, Lebanon Hills Mountain Bike Park or Salem Hills Park. Saint Paul has something for everyone, so as the town says, “Grab a helmet and get spinning!”

Lawrence, Kansas, is known for having one of the most beautiful downtowns in America with a vibrant art and live music scene. But this quirky little town has more to be excited about… Bikes and waffles! Kansas has a very rich cycling history and is the home state of many notable riders — Lawrence is home to the Kansas Cycling Association. While lots of people see Kansas as a perpetually flat state, many of them will think “we’re not in Kansas anymore,” when confronted with the rolling hills that surround Lawrence.

Lawrence plays host to one of the most unique cycling races in the United States, the Belgian Waffle Ride. This 111.11 kilometer race crosses undulating gravel, trails, grass, mud, dirt and a couple patches of asphalt, also including a much-needed Belgian snack available at kilometer 58. 4,000 cyclists flock to Lawrence every year to compete in this unique race! Cruising on the pavement is a favorite pastime of Lawrence locals — coming into town you are sure to see smiling cyclists enjoying the 66 miles of bike paths this quirky town has to offer!

Bellingham, Washington, home to 90,821 residents, is known as the “City of Subdued Excitement” because the appeal of the city lies in its quieter attractions that do not attract hordes of tourists. In-town attractions include mountain and waterfront views, gigantic murals and a vibrant downtown. Slightly out of town, in the surrounding Whatcom County, lies abundant nature and accessible outdoor adventure from the Salish Sea to Mt. Baker and the North Cascades National Park.

Bellingham is growing at a staggering rate of 1.93% annually and has felt the effects of a growing population on this previously small town. In an effort to alleviate transportation concerns, the City of Bellingham passed a Bike and Pedestrian Master plan in 2014 to bring 130 miles of bikeway to the city, bringing the total amount of bikeways in Bellingham to 170 miles connecting downtown and high-traffic areas. This project has been supported by the Tour De Whatcom race, which offers three race categories — 22, 44 or 105 miles — and draws nearly 1,000 bike enthusiasts to Bellingham annually. This town is not only drawing road race fans, it is known as the best place to mountain bike in Washington. Its prize park is Galbraith Mountain, a world-class destination within riding distance of the city. The expansion of Bellingham leaves the city and cyclists racing to keep up with the growing number of attractions, literally and figuratively!

Located just outside of the Iowa state capital of Des Moines, Ankey is a mid-size suburb that is currently growing at a staggering annual rate of 2.94% because it is considered one of the best places to live in Iowa. Ankeny offers a hometown feel with first-class amenities. The nearly 80 miles of bikeways connect the city’s 40 parks, water sports opportunities and downtown. Part of the network is the High Trestle Trail which is 25 miles long and offers great views of the valley. This trail in particular attracts more than 250,000 visitors each year and spurred the City of Ankeny’s 2019 Bicycle Tourism Plan, which plans to expand bicycle facilities and paths across town. Outside of the city, you can bike your way over to Des Moines to explore the State Capitol Building, explore the events at the Iowa State Fairgrounds or support the local farmers at the Downtown Farmers Market. Ankeny is not the most mainstream destination for biking, just one more reason we ranked it as one of the best!

During the pandemic, the United Kingdom saw a surge of cyclists hit the streets. Reports showed an uplift in leisure cyclists, all making the most of quarantine rules that declared outdoor physical activity as essential. The 2021 Active Lives Survey, however, which looked at rates across the U.K., showed a decline driven by lower rates of leisure cyclists. According to the report, the proportion of adults cycling at least once a week in England decreased from 12% in 2020 to 9% in 2021. While there are a number of factors involved in the peaks and troughs, it’s not a stretch to correlate the number of cars on the road with the number of people cycling: As the pandemic waned and more cars returned, bicyclists’ numbers dwindled.

Across the U.K., in an effort to make streets safe for everyone and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, efforts to mitigate congestion have recently been on the rise. The 2020 Gear Change plan from the U.K. Department of Transport, which aimed to build on the uplift experienced with quieter streets, committed to investing £2 billion into cycling and walking. The Prime Minister's foreword called for the investment in calming traffic measures such as Low Traffic Neighborhoods, alongside the expansion and multiplication of Clean Air Zones in U.K. cities. These measures haven’t been without controversy, though recent studies show that they have been effective in reducing congestion and improving the air quality in some of the U.K.'s most affected cities.

Cycling, cyclists, and cycling infrastructure in particular are polarizing topics in the British media. Headlines speak to the notion of unused bike lanes built for the “lycra-clad” elite and bicycle advocacy groups call out the “loud minority of car lovers.” The publication of media reporting guidelines for road collisions, a few powerful public interest campaigns such as the nationwide #BikeIsBest campaign, (that saw the cycling industry invest in myth-busting billboards), and significant investment from shared micromobility operators into public education and marketing have made an impact. As the environmental and public health impacts of making transport more sustainable come to the fore, public opinion is shifting. Evidence shows sustainability and environmental impact climbing the ranks amongst consumers.

While people’s personal principles are certainly pushing forward cycling in the U.K., when it comes to transport, people remain more concerned with convenience, affordability, and accessibility. As such, there is a subset of cyclists that has been growing: those riding electric bicycles. The steep rate of inflation, and the resulting cost of living crisis, have played a significant role in e-bike uptake. Most users see electric bicycles as an economical alternative to the rising costs of public transport and car ownership. What’s more, e-bikes make the intimidating distance and inclines in many U.K. cities manageable. However, the upfront costs of electric bikes, including adaptive and cargo models, remain a major barrier for many.

The 2022 Shimano “State of the Nation Report” for Europe highlighted that, “Economic factors are seen by Europeans as the strongest encouragement for buying or using an e-bike more.” The report goes on to note that across Europe, 47% of people see the cost of living as the primary motivation for e-bike adoption and 41% see purchase subsidies as an encouragement to more e-bike use. It also noted that Sweden, Norway, Austria, France, Germany, and Scotland (part of the U.K.) all presently offer or have offered e-bike subsidies in recent years.

Like much of Europe, the U.K. has continued to invest in e-cycling. This year, the Department of Transport is investing £8 million from the Gear Change pot into a large consortium of cycling academics, bodies, operators, and retailers delivering on the department’s “Cycling Made E-asier” scheme, a widespread campaign focusing on historically underrepresented demographics in the cycling population. As part of the plan, riders will receive subsidized or free access to e-cycles. The program will be evaluated after a year in order to iterate and hopefully double down on what works.

E-cargo bikes and cycling logistics for businesses are also on the rise, a testament to the economic value provided by the speed and agility bikes offer in congested cities. Growing businesses like Pedal Me, a London-based electric bicycle cargo and passenger courier company,are proving you really can move houses by bike. Investment has poured in from the private sector too: In recent years, as micromobility and shared sustainable transport has boomed across the globe, European firms have launched services providing access to tens of thousands of bikes across the U.K.

While opportunities to utilize e-cycles are growing, however, there have been some economic and supply issues caused by Brexit and the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as slow-moving legislation amongst U.K. lawmakers. This has resulted in difficulty getting bikes into the U.K. Without an affordable supply, demand will undoubtedly wane. Likewise, while the U.K. government has made significant commitments to investing in cycling and stimulating the bicycle industry, it’s still no match for the roughly £5 billion promised to assist in the electrification of the automotive industry.

To entrench its commitment to cycling and walking beyond Gear Change, in 2022 the U.K. government introduced a new executive agency: Active Travel England (ATE). Much like the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is responsible for the standards of driving in the U.K., the ATE is responsible for progressing safety, adoption, and the advancement of walking and cycling across the nation. Not missing the importance of public engagement, the body appointed former Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman as commissioner and boasts members such as the former health secretary Chris Whitty.

The formation of ATE itself is a strong indication that the U.K. is getting serious about sustainable transport and the government recently announced an additional £32.9 million devoted to the necessary skills and training to grow a network of active transportation experts. This is in addition to a recently announced £200 million government fund to support pedestrian, cycling, and micromobility projects across the U.K. (and boost local economies). Plus, in the U.K.’s most congested city, London, a new £110 million Scrappage Scheme will incentivize residents to trade in polluting, older vehicles for electric bikes, scooters, and public transit. Taken together, the U.K. is on track to sustain and surpass its active transportation wins, becoming a global leader in the space.

Georgia Yexley is a micromobility expert and inclusive active travel advocate based in the U.K. Having helped hundreds of cities across the globe achieve their sustainable transport aims, she now advises the public, private, and third sector on improving transport equity for all.

For the sixth consecutive year, PeopleForBikes is proud to release our annual City Ratings, a data-driven program to evaluate, identify and compare the best cities and towns for bicycling. For 2022, more than 1,000 cities were rated in the U.S. and Canada, the largest number in program history.

Below are 2022’s top-ranked small, medium and large U.S. cities for bicycling. All cities in these lists have a City Ratings score greater than 50, the threshold score for a great place to bike.

2022's Top-Ranking U.S. Cities for Bicycling

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.”

PeopleForBikes’ new SPRINT methodology lays the groundwork for cities looking to improve bicycling locally.

PeopleForBikes releases our annual City Ratings every June, ranking the best cities for biking and sharing actionable lessons on how any city can improve bicycling locally. Our new SPRINT methodology lays out six simple ways — safe speeds, protected bike lanes, road diets, intersection treatments, network connections and trusted data — in which cities can focus their efforts to make biking better, increasing their Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) and City Ratings score and setting them on a path to becoming a great place to bike.

Travel speeds dictate the risk of serious injury or death in collisions between road users. When travel speeds are low, bikes and cars can safely mix. As travel speeds increase, streets should provide separate spaces for people bicycling, walking and driving. When cities reduce speed limits on residential streets to 25 mph or lower, as Flower Mound, Texas, is doing, their BNA score improves. Speed limit reductions on other kinds of streets can also improve BNA scores. Along with speed limit reductions, PeopleForBikes encourages cities to implement traffic calming features that ensure drivers follow the posted speed limit.

PeopleForBikes, Slow Streets are Safe Streets

PeopleForBikes, What St. Paul Got Right For Bikes

NACTO, City Limits: Setting Safe Speed Limits on Urban Streets

Smart Growth America, Why safety and vehicle speed are incompatible goals for street design

US Department of Transportation, National Roadway Safety Strategy

Protected bike lanes provide physical, vertical separation between motor vehicle traffic and people riding bikes. Protected bike lanes make roads safer for all users, including people driving, and all U.S. cities need more of them. Unprotected bike lanes, also known as painted bike lanes, conventional bike lanes, buffered bike lanes or simply bike lanes, are useful in limited circumstances, such as when travel speeds are 35 mph or less and cars are limited to one or two travel lanes. When roads are wide and fast, streets must provide robust physical separation to keep people riding bikes safe. Cities can be creative with their physical separation using concrete planters, bollards, curbs and even temporary construction materials such as jersey barriers.

PeopleForBikes, Making a Better Bike Lane

PeopleForBikes, Protected Bike Lane Inventory

PeopleForBikes, Study Finds Bike Lanes Can Provide Positive Economic Impact in Cities

FHWA, Separated Bike Lane Planning and Design Guide

Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland Protected Bicycle Lane Planning and Design Guide

For nearly a century, cities have attempted to solve growing traffic congestion by widening roads and freeways. We now know that adding motor vehicle travel lanes results in more cars on the road, a phenomenon known as induced demand, which leads to pollution, increased noise and worse safety outcomes. Wider roads also facilitate speeding. 

Reducing motor vehicle travel lanes, also known as a road diet or right-sizing, benefits all road users by slowing down traffic and shortening crossing distances at intersections. When motor vehicle travel lanes are reduced, the extra lane can be repurposed as a protected bike lane, sidewalk, greenery or outdoor space for local businesses. 

NACTO, Urban Design Guide, Neighborhood Main Street

Project for Public Spaces, A Placemaker’s Primer on Road Diets

When assessing if a safe trip is possible, the BNA considers whether there is infrastructure in place that facilitates safe crossings, also known as an intersection treatment. Streets need intersection treatments when two large roads intersect or one large road intersects a smaller road. Cities can improve their BNA score by adding safe crossings at intersections or mid-block when the distance between existing crossings is far. The BNA counts stop signs, traffic signals, flashing or hybrid beacons and crossing islands as safe intersection treatments.

NACTO, Don’t Give Up at the Intersection

PeopleForBikes, Protected Bike Intersection Inventory

Nick Falbo, Protected Intersections For Bicyclists

US DOT NHTSA, Making A Community Safer for Pedestrians: A Protected Intersection

People who bike on city streets often are familiar with the “bike lane to nowhere,” a lane that abruptly ends in the middle of fast-moving motor vehicle traffic. Gaps in a bike lane represent a broken network connection. A complete bicycle network is continuous, with no gaps or breaks.

Creating a strong bike network also means ensuring people can bike from their homes to common destinations using safe, convenient routes. Paths that wind through a park or along a river are great for recreation, but they are only useful for transportation if they quickly and efficiently help people get to the grocery store or a transit station.

Land use is another important facet of network connections. Cities with compact development and street grids have greater potential for rapid BNA score improvement. Compact development enables people to live close to where they work, shop and recreate, providing more destinations within biking distance and more potential routes to bike to those destinations safely. Similarly, streets with a grid design are better for bicycling because they provide more routes and shorter routes to reach the same destination. Cities can support compact development through incentivizing urban infill and removing parking mandates.

PeopleForBikes & Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, Defining Connected Bike Networks

League of American Bicyclists, Benchmarking Bike Networks

Congress for New Urbanism, Street Networks

Not Just Bikes, The Lively & Livable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America

ITDP & Martha Roskowski, Ideas to Accelerate Parking Reform in the United States

Parking Reform Network, Parking Mandates Map

Tracking data on bicycling infrastructure is challenging because there are few state standards and no federal standards requiring streets to be safe for people riding bikes. Cities are left on their own to decide what counts as safe bike infrastructure, and whether and how to track information about that infrastructure. In the absence of consistent safety and data collection standards, along with easily accessible public repositories for city-level infrastructure data, City Ratings relies on OpenStreetMap and two annual surveys, the Community Survey and City Snapshot, to measure the quality of cities’ bike networks. 

Greater accuracy in OpenStreetMap data leads to more accurate Bicycle Network Analysis results, and more responses to the Community Survey strengthens the relevance of the Community Survey score (please note that the Community Survey is not a representative sample of any city’s population, and typically reflects current riders’ experiences). While not required to generate a City Ratings score, the City Snapshot helps PeopleForBikes improve data quality and strengthen the City Ratings program in the future. Anyone can edit OpenStreetMap data and respond to the Community Survey. City officials can respond to the City Snapshot survey.

PeopleForBikes, City Snapshot notification

PeopleForBikes, OpenStreetMap editing guidance

PeopleForBikes, The Importance Of Mapping Bicycling Data

PeopleForBikes & Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, Using Connectivity Measures to Evaluate and Build Connected Bicycle Networks

US Department of Transportation, Moving to a Complete Streets Design Model: A Report to Congress on Opportunities and Challenges

How to Make Any City Better for Bicycling

These four U.S. cities, all with populations under 50,000 people, scored well in the 2021 City Ratings. Here’s what they’re doing right.

Small cities have an inherent advantage when it comes to bicycling — since they tend to have smaller road networks, changes to a few key streets can really make a difference when it comes to bicycling. On average, the top small cities (those with populations of 50,000 or fewer) score higher in the 2021 City Ratings than the top medium and large cities. Independent of a city's efforts to build great bike infrastructure, there are a few possible explanations for this scoring trend.

First, many of the smaller cities and towns in the 2021 City Ratings tend to have smaller boundaries than we might think. We often envision a small city as extending into the land surrounding it, while in reality, its borders might not encompass much beyond a few main streets. Our 2021 City Ratings are based on our Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA), which only evaluates trips that start within the city boundary. Thus, if your home falls outside the city limits and it’s difficult to bike downtown, that wouldn’t impact your city's score. Inaccurate or missing data in OpenStreetMap will also have a larger impact on a small city's network score, with poor data sometimes improving a city's score. 

Moreover, small cities, especially more rural ones, often consist of a traditional downtown street grid, a few main connecting streets and one or two roads that lead out of town. If speed limits are low, the downtown grid becomes largely low stress, offering multiple routes to reach the same destination. The flip side is that if there’s only one high-stress road to your destination, it can be impossible to bike there using only low-stress routes.

Although the four small cities below definitely benefit from their size, we’ve chosen to highlight them for reasons that go beyond breadth. While completely different in terms of geography, culture and approach, they're all doing something right when it comes to bicycling.

“You hear a lot of people talking about the 15-minute city,” said Rik Ahlberg, chair of the Provincetown Bicycle Committee and owner of Pedal Ptown Bike Tours. “Well, this is the five-minute town. I can get from one end to the other in seven minutes on my bicycle.”

Located on the northern tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown has a year-round population of 3,000 people and five bike shops. Bicycles were introduced to Provincetown in the late 1800s — the first bike path was proposed in 1899 — and they’ve been a primary mode of transportation ever since. Today, residents are able to access all essential services, from the grocery store to the dentist, within a two-mile bike ride. 

“There’s virtually no corner you can stand on in Provincetown and not see a bike rack somewhere,” said Ahlberg, noting that there’s even waterfront bike parking at the beach. “Our bike racks were old and not attractive, so we invested in upgrading them all to the APBP [Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professional] standards.” 

Commercial Street, Provincetown’s main drag, is one way for cars but two way for bicycles. Almost every other street is small, forcing drivers to go slow, creating naturally low-stress bikeways. It also helps that development is dense in Provincetown and no highways bisect it. In the summer months, Provincetown’s population balloons to nearly 60,000 people, and although many people arrive by car, they also bring their bikes.

“Bikes also aren’t tied to economic status here,” said Ahlberg, noting that Provincetown has one of the best year-round commuter rates, as high as 20% by some counts. “Across the board, people ride bikes just because it’s convenient.”

This year, we featured Provincetown in our Advocacy Academy series, “Lessons from the Best Biking Cities.” Watch to learn more about how the town has embraced and encouraged bicycling, engaged its community and invested in low-stress, complete streets.

Traverse City, located in the northwest part of Michigan’s mitten and bordering Lake Michigan, has a population of roughly 15,000 people. With a total area of 8.66 square miles, the small city is flat and laid out on a grid, making it easy to navigate by bike for folks of all ages and abilities. There’s also a strong history of recreational mountain biking, which helped lay the foundation for in-town bike culture.

“Most of the biking in Traverse City really started off as recreation and we have a lot of very large areas of mountain bike trails right around downtown,” said Shawn Winter, planning director for the city. “Within five minutes you can be in the woods — everything is just compact and accessible.”

Although recreational riding helped jumpstart the bike culture in Traverse City, Winter attributes the larger shift to different organizations that have come together and advocated for change over the years. Nonprofit TART Trails, for example, maintains a network of multi-use trails, 5.4 miles of which are in Traverse City proper, and has been hosting a bike commuter event for 27 years. Likewise, Norte, a bike-centric, youth-focused advocacy organization, has been instrumental in achieving a 473% increase in participation in kids actively transporting themselves in the Grand Traverse region. There are also three bike shops in town and regular workshops where residents can learn about things like winter biking.

“Winter is very real in Michigan — it’s a legitimate season that dominates most of the calendar,” said Winter, noting that people sometimes use it as an excuse for not investing in non-motorized infrastructure. “Traverse City does a great job of plowing the sidewalks and people have the gear to bike year-round. Winter really doesn't have the impact on bicycling that I think people assume it would.”

In the summer, tourists flock to Traverse City, taking part in Kayak, Bike & Brew tours and using the bike racks on BATA, the local transit system, to pedal trails further outside of town. According to Winter, Traverse City’s downtown, as well as most parks and beaches, are so popular that they’re actually more accessible by bike due to limited parking. The city’s main east-west corridor, 8th Street, was also redesigned to be more walkable and safe, with lowered speed limits and new bicycle tracks.

“When they redid the street, they added three mid-block crossings in that stretch and did a lot of streetscape improvements with landscaping design, lighting and benches,” said Winter, noting that there are now brand new multi-story buildings under construction in a once bleak stretch. “It's a great example of how public investment can be a catalyst for additional private investment.”

Pella is a small midwestern town of around 10,300 people, home to Central College and famous for its Dutch roots. The tourist town, which covers just 8.73 square miles, celebrates that history with a fully functional 1850s-style windmill, an annual tulip festival and a downtown canal. Like the Netherlands, Pella is also a great place to bike — although it could do more to embrace that aspect of its heritage.

“It’s a small, grid town that’s just easy to get around in,” said Mark Wyatt, executive director of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition. “Pella also has a pretty substantial trail system leading out of town.”

That trail, the Volksweg Trail, is a 17-mile asphalt path that extends from town to Lake Red Rock, Iowa’s largest lake. Aside from the miles connecting the trail to town though, Pella hasn’t invested in the infrastructure that might set it apart as a bicycling destination. Chris Van Gent, who owns the sole bike shop in town — Iowa Bike Co. — believes relatively inexpensive investments like wayfinding signs, sharrows and crucially, more much-needed bike parking, would help boost ridership.

“Protected bike lanes don’t really make sense here,” said Van Gent, adding that the bike “advertising” that comes with some of the low-cost fixes does. “People would bike more and shop more if there was bike parking.”

In 2018, Pella launched a bike share system in partnership with VeoRide, which despite being profitable and working well, was pulled by the national micromobility company in 2020. In large part, Pella scores well because the town has grown around its downtown core and is evenly dispersed with clusters of essential services, retail shops and residences. Unlike many other small towns in rural America, Pella’s main street is also distinct from the highway, leaving a series of connected, low-stress streets intact. 

Iowa is also home to RAGBRAI, Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, an epic seven-day bicycling adventure that changes routes every year. The longest, largest and oldest bicycle touring event in the world, it’s an Iowa institution that has a real effect on the whole state. For many, the race is the reason people start biking in the first place.

“It can be a real financial generator, with 20,000-plus bicyclists rolling through,” said Wyatt. “It’s created this opportunity for rural Iowa to see bicycling as an economic generator.”

Pella is blessed with a setup that naturally makes it a great place for riding bikes. With some smart investments and political willpower, it could easily become a true bike town, thriving economically and benefitting from safer streets in the process.

With a population of 47,302, San Luis Obispo, or SLO, is the largest city on this list. Located in California’s Central Coast region, the city is just under 13 square miles. Its relatively small size coupled with the temperate climate makes SLO a great place to bicycle, whether you're going to work, recreating or running errands. Around town, you’re as likely to see a mountain biker as you are two kids on the back of their parent’s cargo bike.

“It’s a dynamic community and we have a major university in California Polytechnic State,” said Rick Ellison, executive director of Bike SLO County. “College towns bring a certain energy that’s good for the whole bicycling community.”

The city is also phenomenally progressive when it comes to roadway safety, consistently improving bike lanes, planning for a safe, complete network and promoting bikes as a way to address climate change. 

“The city recognizes that the key to getting more people on bikes is to have effective and safe infrastructure,” said Ellison, noting that greenways, neighborhood networks, bike lanes and traffic calming efforts all play into that vision. “Our leadership believes that San Luis Obispo can be the leader when it comes to climate action by making bikes part of the solution.”

Last year, SLO was featured in our Advocacy Academy series, “Lessons from the Best Biking Cities.” In the episode, we learn from SLO Active Transportation Manager Adam Fukushima about the city’s 75-mile-plus bike network and how climate action funds are allocated for bike improvements.

How does your city rank? Check out our 2021 City Ratings and learn how to improve your score.

From 2020 to 2021, the Minnesota capital’s City Rating score increased significantly. Here’s why.

At first glance, St. Paul, Minnesota, doesn’t seem like a particularly impressive city when it comes to bicycling. With a 2021 City Ratings score of 46, the midwestern capital falls just below the threshold of a score that translates to high ridership, improved safety and considerable access. However, St. Paul residents who responded to our Community Survey, a major component of every city’s overall score, believe St. Paul is a great place for biking.

Why the gap? Well, the community score accounts for residents’ insights regarding how often people ride, how safe they feel, how well the local network serves them and if they’re aware of nearby bicycle resources. In a place with a strong bike culture, like St. Paul, respondents might skew in favor of those who ride the most (those who don’t ride at all aren’t likely to respond to a survey about biking), as well as those who ride recreationally (our scores account for the transportation experience). Add in new, highly visible infrastructure and St. Paul’s efforts to take a Complete Streets and Vision Zero approach, and folks may not realize how much better bicycling in the city could be.

Still, St. Paul is among the top 10 large U.S. cities for bicycling and the most improved compared to 2020. Championing bicycling in St. Paul’s is Mayor Melvin Carter and his Chief Resilience Officer Russ Stark, who’ve made a dedicated bike network a top priority. The city’s overall bike plan, adopted in 2015, lays out an eventual 346-mile network, although the city is currently at 207 miles with no set timeline for completion. And like just about every place in America, St. Paul has work to do when it comes to making transportation more equitable. Luckily, its diversity is well-represented amongst city officials, going a long way to help people feel like their viewpoints are being represented and advanced.

There are two major factors that led to St. Paul’s 2021 score bump, one of them being a series of infrastructure improvements that came to fruition in 2020. Those include critical improvements to the city’s downtown area and a significantly improved network by way of several brand new Regional Trails, the term the Twin Cities uses to describe bikeways that link neighborhoods throughout the metro area. The second, relatively easy action St. Paul made was to lower its default speed limits, switching from 30 to 20 mph on residential streets and 25 mph downtown. 

“It was important to us as owners of the rights of way that the speed limits we post be reflective of the speed limits we want people to drive,” said Reuben Collins, transportation planner and engineer with the city. “The first step in getting people to drive slower is setting the expectation that you want people to drive slower.”

Excessive speed is a chief cause of crashes and fatalities on U.S. roadways yet the issue doesn’t often get the national attention it deserves. More than 10,000 people are killed in speed-related collisions each year (the number of which has increased during the pandemic), a statistic that’s in line with alcohol-related crashes. Lowering speed limits is a matter of life and death: A person hit by a car traveling 35 mph is three times as likely to die as someone hit at 25 mph. When the Minnesota state legislature changed its laws in 2019, allowing cities to deviate from the state standard and set speed limits on their own streets for the first time, St. Paul saw an opportunity.

Due to the fluid movement between St. Paul and Minneapolis, whose adjacent borders are separated only by the Mississippi River, it made sense for the cities to coordinate lowered speed limits and a “20 is Plenty” educational campaign. From the beginning, both municipalities agreed that increased enforcement was not the desired method, deciding it wouldn't be sustainable, effective or equitable. The changes were primarily communicated through a public awareness video (available in Hmong, Spanish and Somali), press releases and newspaper articles that emphasized safety.

Not wanting to post signs on every single residential street, the Twin Cities collaborated on a strategy to target key areas. Utilizing relatively inexpensive lawn signage, stickers and “gateway signs” at various entry points to each city, St. Paul and Minneapolis were able to communicate that a residential speed limit of 20 mph was now in effect. In the end, St. Paul still installed or changed more than 725 speed limit signs on city-owned streets (Minneapolis’ number was more than double). 

“The fact that Minneapolis and St. Paul moved together with the same program, implementing it at the same time — I think it made the system stronger, more resilient to criticism and easier for the public to understand,” said Collins, noting that the cities leaned heavily on NACTO guidance. “The response has been universal applause that lowered street limits is a good thing.”

It’s certainly good for bicycling. In 2020, St. Paul’s Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) score, a key factor in determining our City Rankings, was nine. The infrastructure improvements completed last year, combined with the citywide speed limit changes, bumped St. Paul's BNA score to 42. It’s a dramatic increase and only adds to PeopleForBikes’ position that slow streets are safe streets.

St. Paul’s network map in 2020 (left) and 2021 (right). Lowering speed limits on residential streets transformed the city from majority high-stress thoroughfares, represented in red, to low-stress ones, colored blue.

There is a growing trend to reduce speed limits on residential streets within and outside of the United States. Despite residential speed limits being relatively high across most of Canada, Edmonton and Calgary reduced them late last year, resulting in stronger BNA scores. Still, speed limit reductions can be useless without larger design changes. Memphis, Tennessee, also lowered its residential speed limits to 25 mph but resulted in a BNA rise of just six points due to other network limitations — a good example of how speed limits might help, but must also be combined with other infrastructure improvements. 

In St. Paul, the slower speed limits have only boosted an already strong bicycle culture. Many neighborhood commercial areas are based on old streetcar networks, making shops or restaurants an easy bike or walk from most people’s homes. Plus, there’s the Regional Trail Network, considered the backbone of cities’ bike infrastructure, and a parks department that truly supports it. Add in the fact that St. Paul has already reduced off-street parking requirements along some transit routes — and is considering eliminating parking space requirements for new construction altogether — and the city has a lot going for it when it comes to bicycling.

 “I think we’re at a place where our infrastructure is starting to catch up with our culture,” said Collins, although he notes this year won’t be as big a year for new projects. “Over the coming years, we’ll be investing almost as much but in shorter projects with more complex engineering. So the money isn't quite going as far in terms of mileage, but we’re still creating important and critical connections.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) recently released the Equitable Transportation Community (ETC) Explorer, a new tool to help city planners, advocates, and elected officials plan more equitable transportation investments. This interactive web application helps identify historically underserved communities based on a variety of factors, including those that contribute to transportation insecurity, such as transportation access, safety, and cost burden. 

The tool also assesses climate, disaster, and environmental burdens, providing decision-makers with the necessary information to construct resilient bike infrastructure in the face of climate change and natural disasters. The ETC Explorer's five lenses — Transportation Insecurity, Climate and Disaster Risk Burden, Environmental Burden, Health Vulnerability, and Social Vulnerability — provide a deeper understanding of the cumulative strain communities experience from underinvestment in transportation. 

This tool is just one component of USDOT's efforts to confront and address decades of underinvestment in transportation as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice40 initiative. As a low-cost form of transportation, bikes are well poised to alleviate transportation insecurity, one of the more significant contributors to poverty that affects one-in-four Americans. Bikes can provide access to essential services and mitigate environmental and health stressors by reducing air pollution and promoting physical activity. They can also address social vulnerability by providing affordable, reliable transportation to employment and education opportunities. 

In the last few years, some cities have developed their own equity measurement tools for transportation infrastructure. In 2021, New Orleans launched its Bicycle Equity Index to measure and track disparities in access to biking infrastructure. The index provides a score for each neighborhood based on access to bike lanes, bike share stations, bike parking, and safety to help the city identify areas needing additional investment. Similarly, since 2020, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has been developing its Transportation Equity Index, which aims to define equity problems and solutions (an initial version of Caltrans tool is expected to be released in mid-2023). 

For communities that lack funding to develop their own custom tools, the ETC Explorer is a fantastic resource. This is especially important as most USDOT grant programs now require applicants to include equity considerations, such as identifying underserved communities and how proposed projects would reduce barriers to opportunity. 

With the help of the ETC Explorer, more communities can prioritize work with underserved communities, especially as they compete for billions of dollars in USDOT funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure investments. By using the ETC Explorer to plan for investments, cities across the country can address decades of underinvestment in transportation and promote more equitable outcomes for all Americans.

When we talk about the great bike cities, we often look to Europe, and rightfully so — there are few places that can compare to the sheer scale and quality of bicycling in a place like Copenhagen, Sevilla, or, more recently, Paris. It’d be a mistake, however, to not consider Latin America, where places like Bogota and Mexico City have become leaders on the sustainable transportation front — and notably, have done so with substantially smaller budgets.

Mexico City has been a leader in bicycling since 2007 when it first launched its Muevete en Bici open streets program, which every Sunday, bans car traffic along seven city streets including Paseo de la Reforma, a wide avenue that runs diagonally across the heart of the city. The closure, which is more than 30 miles long and traverses six districts, brings — at its height — some 90,000 people from all walks of life to the streets where they’re free to walk, roll, and ride in solidarity and without fear. Still, it’s only in the last few years that the city has truly become a great place for people to bike every day of the week. 

“In the last 20 years, things went really slow because it was more or less like experiments — there wasn’t a complete picture of what kind of infrastructure [the previous administration] wanted,” says Salvador Medina Ramírez, the general director of planning and policies at Mexico City’s Ministry of Mobility. “There was a lot of bike infrastructure but it was not a network.”

Since 2019, when Ramírez started, the bike network has begun to ramp up, a change he attributes to a combination of political will, a faster build pace, and a more holistic vision for a connected bike network — one that’s truly integrated with the city’s existing transit infrastructure. Mexico City’s current head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, is committed to improving mobility in the city, and crucially, she sees bicycling as an essential mode of transportation. With official backing and funding, planners were able to move quickly to get more than 140 miles of new bike infrastructure on the ground between 2019 to 2022.

Photo credit: Mexico City’s Ministry of Mobility

When determining where to build, metro connections were prioritized and bike hubs were built alongside lane miles, ensuring people could travel by bike across one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. 

“If you try to make all the trips by bike door to door, it would be impossible,” says Ramírez. “The integration with public transport is essential if you want to make people use the bike. If you don’t, they will change to other modes like cars or motorcycles.”

Today, being multi-modal in Mexico City has never been easier, with bike lanes connecting to the metro but also bus lines and the elevated trolley, alongside public parks and schools. Crucial to building those key connections is ensuring there is ample, secure bike parking — places with security cameras where you can register and leave your bike without fear of it getting stolen or picked over for parts. In total, there are 10 bike parking facilities throughout Mexico City, mainly near stations that are around the city center, with capacity for anywhere from 80 to 400 bikes.

At the end of many metro lines within Mexico City’s center, riders can once again bike, this time using bike share. Mexico City was an early adopter of shared micromobility — the EcoBici system first launched in 2010 and while it had a slow start, today it’s the largest in Latin America. Over the next few months, EcoBici will grow from 480 to 687 stations, and from 6,500 bicycles to 9,300. While the system doesn’t include any e-bikes (the financials of expansion didn’t allow for them), Mexico City is relatively flat. 

Until recently, EcoBici was government-owned, meaning the city was responsible for buying all the bikes and stations. While the model ensured that bike share was operated for the public benefit, it was costly. In 2021, Mexico City made the decision to solicit private investment in order to expand its Ecobici system. Looking to other cities for inspiration, including Barcelona, Argentina, and London, officials decided to sign on with Lyft to provide its assets and to seek sponsorships, all while ensuring bike share remained a government enterprise. 

“This is public transportation operated by a private company,” says Guillermo Ávila, Mexico City’s director of road security and sustainable urban mobility systems. “It needs to work as we believe it should work.”

For Silva and others working on bicycling in Mexico City, bike share is essentially an extension of its transit system and is treated accordingly. Case in point: Since 2013, Ecobici has been fully integrated into the TCDMX integrated mobility card, which is used for access to the Metro, trains, and buses in addition to bike share. While EcoBici doesn’t currently have a low-income program, an annual membership includes unlimited 45-minute rides for less than $28 a year. There are also plans to launch a more affordable membership program for students and older adults, as well as a cash payment system (for those unable to pay, there are also free bikes available to rent for up to three hours at a time via Bicigratis stands throughout the city). 

Ecobici, Mexico City's bike share system, is the largest in Latin America and continuously expanding.

Naturally, the city’s bike share system has grown alongside Mexico City’s network of bike lanes. The city is now focused on connecting places on its outskirts to complement the existing network, targeting poorer neighborhoods where bicycling is already the mode of choice.

“In the last few years, infrastructure has been spreading to parts of the city that needed the infrastructure most,” says Ireri Brumón Martínez, deputy director of cycling systems at Mexico City’s Ministry of Mobility. “Some districts already used bicycles but they didn’t have cyclist infrastructure, so the investments are going towards those parts of the city outside the center.”

To build out its network, Mexico City isn’t relying on just one type of infrastructure but has instead incorporated a variety of solutions, always accounting for local necessities. This strategy not only makes sense from a cost-benefit perspective but it’s also more equitable. Complementing its network expansion are government-backed programs that teach children and adults how to ride a bicycle, as well as separate courses for learning to use a bike for transportation.

Other programs for increasing access and building a culture of bicycling are often run by Mexico City’s bike advocates, a group of passionate cyclists behind many of the reforms playing out today. Chief amongst them is Areli Carreón, Mexico City’s designated Bike Mayor and one of the founders of Bicitekas, an organization that promotes the use of bicycles locally and lobbies for policy change.

“We have managed to have many truthful, awesome achievements during the past years,” says Carreón. “In 2020, we managed to change the constitution to include the right of safe and equitable transportation.”

Mexico’s “Right to Mobility” amendment is distinct in that it specifically details safe mobility as a human right, and Carreón sees the potential for it to forever change budget and policy decisions in Mexico City and the rest of the country. Having safe mobility enshrined as a constitutional right will help in holding folks accountable and setting the precedent for safe infrastructure that works for people of all ages and abilities, no matter their mode of choice. 

While the amendment was in the works before the pandemic struck, it was the lockdowns of 2020 that created the biggest opportunity for cycling in Mexico City. In May of 2020, Bicitekas pushed for the creation of a huge pop-up bike lane on one of the capital’s longest thoroughfares, Avenida de los Insurgentes. Made from recycled materials and erected in just three days, the 28-kilometer, two-way cycle lane resulted in an increase of bicyclists of up to 275%. Its success led to the creation of a permanent, high-quality bike lane on the avenue, a huge win for mobility in the city.

“Pop-up bike lanes installed during the pandemic were really well accepted,” says Ramírez. “It made it possible to put a bike lane, and if it was well-planned, it would be socially accepted without much problem.”

Adding to the shift in infrastructure and cultural perceptions that occurred during the pandemic were all the new riders that found cycling. In Mexico City, bike shops were named an essential service in 2020, allowing the sale of bikes to continue and helping usher in people that might not have started bicycling otherwise.

“One of the things that changed with the pandemic was people started to appreciate more and more doing activities in the street,” says Ramírez. “In most of Mexico, [biking] is really common but with the middle class, it was not so common, so that changed a lot.”

Today, everyone agrees that there’s still work to be done. Like many places around the world, wealthier, more tourist-focused areas still have better bike infrastructure and Mexico’s City’s network is far from complete. As in cities across the world, more safe, high-quality infrastructure and increased road safety are needed to bring more people to bicycling. Carreón cites a local study showing that a significant number of people would be willing to ride if those two things were addressed. To get there, however, she sees political will and engaging the private sector as a must.

“The private sector has just as much of a stake in the game,” says Carreón, speaking specifically of those that sell bikes and services. “They should take a step forward to help this advocacy work because they’ll benefit from it.”

Mexico City has a population of more than 8.8 million people — if just a small fraction took up bicycling (a great option in a place notorious for bad traffic and poor air quality), the transformation and impact on the bike industry would be tremendous. Even without private sector investment, Mexico City has made incredible progress toward becoming a great place for cycling. With a City Ratings score of 57, it’s a step above most places in the U.S. and constantly improving, thanks to a combination of political willpower, a focus on building a connected network and constructing high-quality infrastructure fast, integrating bicycling with transit, and investing public funds in bike share and other equity initiatives. 

“In Mexico City, we took into account three main things,” says Martínez, naming the government’s focus on infrastructure, access through bike share and transit, and culture, by way of the city’s open streets events and educational opportunities. “Those three things, they have to be connected. You have to do it all.”

How to Build a Bike City: Lessons from CDMX

Time and again, we’ve seen that when speed limits fall, safety rises — as do cities’ Bicycle Network Analysis scores.

“Slow streets are safe streets.” While somewhat cliche, that oft-repeated adage is also true: Speed is a key factor in traffic deaths. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speed played a role in a quarter of all fatal crashes in 2018 — as speed limits and speeds increase, so do fatalities. Between 2019 and 2021, as speeding has increased, per capita vehicle deaths have only gotten worse, rising an astonishing 17.5%.

All of this is terrible news for 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. As the National Organization of Transportation Officials (NACTO) notes, vehicle speed at the time of impact is directly correlated to whether a person will live or die. That means that a car traveling at 35 mph is five times more likely to hit and kill a person than a car traveling at 20 mph. Not to mention, cars traveling at higher speeds are also more likely to crash in general.

Because the likelihood of fatality increases exponentially with vehicle speed, even small reductions in speed limits can have an outsized effect. The Highway Safety Manual shows that deadly crashes can be decreased by 17% if speeds are reduced by just 1 mph, while a separate study from Sweden's Lund Institute of Technology found that a 10% reduction in the average speed led to 34% fewer fatal crashes.

Not only can lower speed limits save lives but they also make it easier for people to choose not to drive. When travel speeds are low, bikes and cars can safely mix. When cities reduce speed limits on residential streets to 25 mph or lower, their Bicycle Network Analysis score — a major component of the PeopleForBikes' City Ratings system — improves. Speed limit reductions on other kinds of streets can also improve BNA scores. In fact, the fastest way for cities to make streets safer for bicycling, and thus improve their scores, is by slowing down streets.

Aside from better, more accurate data inputs, the main reason cities experienced a drastic improvement in their 2022 City Ratings score was due to speed limit reductions. In Miami, after the city lowered speed limits from 30 to 25 mph on neighborhood streets, its BNA score jumped from 4 to 20. As a result, Miami’s City Ratings score went from 13 in 2021 to 26 in 2022. Similarly, in 2021, when Knoxville, Tennessee, decided to lower its default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph, its BNA score improved from 8 in 2021 to 24 in 2022 and its City Ratings score jumped from 19 to 31. Seattle’s BNA score also rose from 53 to 58 last year, thanks in part to the city’s widespread reduction of speed limits on most major roads.

From 2020 to 2021, St. Paul, Minnesota's City Ratings score also increased significantly, owing to a series of infrastructure improvements but also to the city lowering its default speed limits, switching from 30 to 20 mph on residential streets and 25 mph downtown. St. Paul made the decision after the Minnesota state legislature changed its laws in 2019, allowing cities to deviate from the state standard and set speed limits on their own streets for the first time. While not required to repost new signage on every single residential street (the city instead relied on a substantial marketing campaign), St. Paul still installed or changed more than 725 speed limit signs on city-owned streets.

Alongside concerns about enforcing new speed limits, the cost and labor required to repost street signs can be a major deterrent for cities looking to rethink speed limits. In Texas, cities aren’t allowed to change the default speed limit — 30 mph on residential streets — unless it also posts new signage on every affected street. If the state’s largest city, Houston, wanted to change its default speed limit, the estimated cost of posting new signs citywide would be about $25.6 million. In 2020, the capital city of Austin voted to reduce the speed limits on particular roads by 5 to 10 mph, lowering the default residential speed limits down to 25 mph. Due to the signage requirements, however, the process has been slow and expensive — many neighborhoods remain unchanged and under state law, police can't enforce the lower speed limits until signs are posted.

In Flower Mound, Texas, a city of some 80,000 people just north of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area, the town has gradually been reducing speed limits since 2019. According to Matt Hotelling, senior engineering transportation manager with the Town of Flower Mound, the process started with school districts before expanding so that neighborhoods could petition the town to lower speed limits.

“If the neighborhood had overwhelming support, we’d take it through our city’s transportation commission, and then if they provided a favorable recommendation — which 99% of the time they did — it would go on to council for a vote,” said Hotelling. “And again, almost 99% of the time, they decided to lower speed limits.”

In 2021, by the time Flower Mound’s transportation commission opted to look into a town-wide policy for speed limits, close to one-fifth of the town’s streets had already been changed. After weighing the numerous safety benefits, the commission eventually recommended that all residential streets should default to 25 mph — if a neighborhood wanted a 30 mph minimum, the onus would now be on them to go through the process of changing it back. In the end, four out of five council members voted to lower the default speed limit.

Hotelling notes that the change wasn’t contentious. After all, much of Flower Mound’s streets have already been changed to 25 mph and the safety benefits are well-known and accepted. Flower Mound’s BNA Score improved four points as a result of the residential speed limit reduction.

Again, what’s proved most difficult is Texas’ posting requirement. Some neighborhoods have resisted signs, especially when their streets are small and going fast is already near impossible. Some signs can be posted at every entrance to a subdivision to a thoroughfare, which raises the question of whether or not Flower Mound can just post signs at its corporate limits.

“That’s part of what we’re going through now, checking with the local [Texas Department of Transportation] TxDot folks,” said Hotelling. “I’m not sure if we’re going to get the green light.”

Although there have been some efforts at the state level to lower default speed limits, little progress has been made. In California, Assembly Bill 43 took effect this year, offering cities more control over their speed limits. Before the new law, the City of Los Angeles was actually required to increase speeds on many city streets. In March 2022, after the bill was pushed through, the L.A. Department of Transportation announced it was reducing speeds by 5 mph on more than 177 miles of city streets.

L.A. worked with its City Council to implement the new changes quickly and there’s hope that more places will follow suit, prioritizing roads with high concentrations of vulnerable road users. There’s increasing evidence that when cities lower speed limits, it saves lives and encourages the sharing of our roadways. A widely celebrated success story comes from Spain: When the speed limit on single-lane urban roads was lowered to 18.5 mph, road deaths fell by 14%. In regard to cyclists, deaths were cut almost in half.

While an important start, lowering speed limits alone isn’t enough. Along with speed limit reductions, PeopleForBikes encourages cities to implement traffic calming features that ensure drivers follow the posted speed limit, as well as comprehensive bike networks for all ages and abilities. After all, people can and do disobey speed limits. Good design and widespread infrastructure, however, are powerful tools that can’t be ignored. Ultimately, both reductions in speed and traffic calming designs are necessary to create safer, bike-friendly cities.

Slow Streets Pave the Way to Better Bike Cities

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.

Austin, Texas, and Paris, France, both made big commitments to prioritize bicycling. But how do the cities’ efforts compare?

When people talk about great bicycling cities, places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam usually lead the conversation, perhaps followed by Portland or San Francisco if you’re focused on biking in the U.S. While these lofty reputations are thanks to a myriad of work done by each of these cities over many years, one underlying similarity links many of the world’s best places to ride a bike: a dedicated, concerted investment in infrastructure that gets people where they need to go, safely and conveniently, without needing to get behind the wheel of a car. 

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