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

After breaking a leg skiing, this rider’s e-bike has been instrumental in aiding both her physical therapy and mental well-being. 

There’s a growing body of research on the myriad of health benefits that electric bicycles offer, from improved cardio to helping people keep riding as they age. They can even quicken the recovery time of some injuries, my latest included. 

In early January, I suffered a broken tibia and fibula in my right leg from a nasty fall while skiing. Two months after breaking my leg and undergoing surgery, I’m more comfortable riding my e-bike than walking to get around. 

As I heal, I’m using my e-bike as part of my physical therapy. Biking is a low-impact activity and the small electric boost makes the work of going uphill easier for anyone, especially if you have a Class 2 electric bike with a throttle. My leg muscles, atrophied while I relied on crutches and sat on the couch for six weeks, are slowly charging back up with every ride. I could not be more grateful I brought my e-bike home in 2021.

It’s been less than a month since I’ve put weight on my right leg, and I can already ride my e-bike to physical therapy appointments, for small errands, to see friends and get out to enjoy the spring sunshine. Walking is also getting easier because I’ve been biking, loosening stiff joints and building up muscle.

I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., for nearly eight years, all without a car. I’ve always relied on my bike, shared micromobility, walking and transit to navigate the city. Getting back to that level of independent mobility is priceless. I also recognize I’m incredibly lucky to both own an e-bike and have access to connected and protected bike infrastructure right outside my door, since my safety feels more important than ever knowing that a fall or a crash could further damage my leg and set my recovery back — if not worse. 

Most physical therapy appointments start with a warm up to get your muscles and body moving. Limping in, I’m asked to spend a few minutes on a stationary bicycle before pointing to my helmet to show I’ve already biked there. Therapists are often shocked until I explain I rode an e-bike, and after a few questions about it, we get right to work poking, stretching and strengthening my leg. 

I’m no stranger to PT: I’m a high-energy, low-skill athlete with a dramatic falling habit. I tried playing soccer in an adult recreation league in the fall of 2017 but tore my left ACL in the first game. I was back on Capital Bikeshare within weeks, opting for a slow roll to most destinations instead of walking since it was less strenuous and more efficient. 

In the summer of 2018, I hopped on a mountain bike for the first time and flipped over the handlebars, shattering my left collarbone (only seconds after watching my friend flip and break hers too). Though it took awhile to get back on a bike, I again relied on the comfort and ease of an upright bikeshare bike before hunching over the drop bars of my well-loved 1974 Schwinn Sprint. 

In the aftermath of these injuries, biking did more than provide me with a low-impact physical activity, though that was major for my body’s overall rehabilitation. It completely transformed my mood and my mental well-being, giving me agency over how and when I could move through my city and our natural world. With an e-bike, I’m back in the saddle sooner than previous injuries, cranking the motor up to turbo mode so I can gently work my leg back into action.

My last big bike ride before this most recent injury was my first century ride, 102 miles at El Tour De Tucson, in November. I was regularly biking 15-30 miles several mornings a week and spending weekends on the abundance of bike paths, scenic rides and gravel roads around D.C., Maryland and Virginia. I kept a clear divide between my e-bike and my road bike, even leveraging the difference to help convince skeptics. My e-bike is for utility only, like getting groceries, taking meetings across town or commuting to my grad program. My acoustic bike is for fun and exercise. 

In my recovery though, my e-bike is everything. It’s going to be a while longer before I’m back to my spandex-clad morning workout rides, but I’ll get there sooner thanks to my e-bike. 

I’m now meeting up with friends I didn’t regularly ride with on their commuters and hybrids, spending more time in conversation on our bikes, enjoying good weather and each others’ company. Check out my first joyride since breaking my leg! I plan to keep blurring this line even when my leg is in better shape. 

I considered myself an e-bike evangelist before I broke my leg, advocating for the E-BIKE Act and electric bicycle incentives with PeopleForBikes and in my personal life, talking about them to anyone and everyone who would listen. Now, I can’t imagine where my body and mind would be without my e-bike. 

A new study found that installing road murals at intersections can cut down on crashes by a whopping 50%.

“Paint won’t save a life,” is a line popular with bicycle advocates and for good reason — a stripped lane does little to protect a bicyclist in the event of a vehicle collision. It’s the reason why we believe protected bike lanes should be the default for roadways with speed limits above 30 mph. A new study from Bloomberg Philanthropies, however, suggests that when deployed correctly, paint can in fact offer protection.

Researchers examined 17 diverse study sites, comparing Historial Crash Analysis data before and after the introduction of art projects, including intersection murals, crosswalk art, painted plazas or sidewalk extensions. Notably, none of these designs included any other built infrastructure improvements at the time they were painted. The study also took into account an Observational Behavior Assessment, which compared before and after video footage of motorist and pedestrian behavior at five U.S. locations with asphalt art projects installed in 2021 as part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Art Initiative. 

Through analyzing crash data, the “Asphalt Art Safety Study” found significantly improved safety performance across a variety of measures after the installation of asphalt art:

50% decrease in the rate of crashes involving pedestrians or other vulnerable road users

37% decrease in the rate of crashes leading to injuries

Similarly, the observational assessment found the art installations resulted in:

25% decrease in pedestrian crossings involving a conflict with drivers

27% increase in the frequency of drivers immediately yielding to pedestrians with the right of way

38% decrease in pedestrians crossing against the walk signal

Artist Mensah Bey drew inspiration from West African symbolism for this Norfolk, VA, mural.

These findings confirm what many involved in such interventions anecdotally know to be true: Art-driven transportation projects can help improve safety for our most vulnerable road users, all while beautifying our communities. Despite broad public support, however, art in the public right of way has consistently faced hurdles at the regulatory level. In fact, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which dictates U.S. regulations when it comes to street markings and design, currently bans colorfully painted crosswalks due to questionable safety concerns. 

In Washington, D.C., transportation planners for the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) found a workaround to the draconian MUTCD guidelines through the beautification of bike racks, utility boxes, curb bump-outs and pedestrian zones. Launched in 2019, DDOT’s Arts in the Right-of-Way (AROW) program has developed a handful of art guides geared toward sharing out best practices and empowering residents to take an active role in creating more colorful neighborhoods. Not only have residents responded positively to the art but city officials believe they’ve made the streets safer for the most vulnerable road users among us.

A series of murals at three prominent intersections in the riverfront area of Saginaw, MI.

Much of the current pushback against asphalt art, however, is due to a fear that Automated Vehicle technology will fail to recognize pedestrians amidst all the colors and designs. This logic implies that technology should be the priority — in order to create spaces where folks feel comfortable walking and bicycling, we need to prioritize them, and not the machines that pollute our cities and kill Americans in large numbers every year (not to mention the accompanying highways that bisect our neighborhoods and do little to alleviate congestion). All of these issues disproportionately affect low-income and/or BIPOC communities, which bear the brunt of the physical and mental harm a car-centric culture has created.

Another criticism levied against asphalt art, albeit to a lesser extent, is the need to repaint it at regular intervals. Considering the relative affordability of paint though and the positive safety effects the Bloomberg study showcases, asphalt art is arguably one of the most affordable traffic interventions available. Plus — as the AROW program in Washington D.C. demonstrates — when done properly, creating and maintaining murals can become a community event. 

Volunteers help paint the design of local artist Candy Carver in Durham, NC.

To date, Bloomberg’s Asphalt Art Initiative has led to the installation of 42 separate street murals throughout the U.S., costing $25,000 each, which have brought joy alongside safer streets. In order to help other cities facilitate a more colorful transition, Bloomberg has developed an Asphalt Art Guide and is currently accepting grant applications from European cities. 

E-bikes are fun, but do they still offer exercise? We surveyed the available data to find out.

There’s no question that electric bikes are soaring in popularity, or that sales will continue to rise (especially as gas prices do, too). The one demographic that seems more hesitant to embrace the e-bike boom, however, is avid cyclists and other fitness enthusiasts. To those more drawn to “type II fun,” an e-bike — with its pedal-powered battery offering riders a boost — can feel like cheating, a way around hard climbs and the stamina required for a traditional 20-mile ride. 

But the beauty of e-bikes lies in the fact that they’re more inclusive, allowing people of all ages and fitness levels to enjoy bicycling. While more expensive than your average bike, there is a slew of electric bicycle incentive programs aimed at low-income individuals, a growing list of e-bike lending libraries and an increasing number of bike share systems going all-electric. Plus, because of the ease associated with using them, electric bikes are also more likely to replace car trips (a recent study found car owners who also own an e-bike used the bike to replace about half the miles they usually traveled by car). 

People love e-bikes for the very reason their detractors don’t: the bike's motor and rechargeable battery carry the brunt of the hard work. 

According to Chris Cherry, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Tennessee who studies e-bike use, a battery-powered bike can help bridge the gap and bring non-cyclists into the fold. “The most powerful thing that e-bikes do is that they take the most painful parts of bike riding away,” said Cherry. “Either the climb or the duration — the stuff that keeps people from starting.”

Because electric bikes are less physically demanding on joints and muscles, they not only bring in riders who might otherwise be inactive, but they also offer the opportunity for people to ride longer periods of time and go greater distances. That leads to more folks using e-bikes as an option for commuting or running errands. Although users won’t find themselves doing the sort of vigorous physical activity uphill mountain biking or even hot yoga entails, e-bike use has been shown to deliver the sort of moderate physical activity most doctors recommend. 

While Cherry isn’t an exercise scientist, he did partner with several on a 2017 study that found e-bikes provide moderate physical activity on flat segments and downhill segments and vigorous physical activity on uphill segments. Notably, that same study found that compared to traditional bikes and walking, e-bikes lower a person’s need to shower after riding, allow riders to dress appropriately for the weather, require less exertion and elicit higher levels of enjoyment.

“If you’re only using your bike when you feel energized versus all the time — as e-bike users tend to — then you’re not doing yourself any favors,” said Cherry. “Research says people ride e-bikes more often and farther, so they get more physical activity, even though it’s less intense.”

A 2019 study found that e-bikes can provide intense exercise, it just doesn’t feel like a workout. Another 2021 study came to roughly the same conclusion: Electric bicycling can definitely count as exercise. Those researchers, who compared the physiological effects of e-bikes and standard road bikes during a simulated commute, determined that the e-bike riders elevated their breathing and heart rates enough to count as a meaningful workout. However, those health benefits varied from person to person.

When on a Class 2 e-bike — which includes a throttle and a max speed of 20 miles per hour — a person could theoretically not pedal at all, burning through their battery power using it like a motorcycle. Obviously, to obtain a health benefit, one has to actually pedal the bike. Similarly, if you’re always using the maximum amount of pedal assist, you’ll get less exercise than someone who’s more conservative. In the 2021 study, some participants that used the highest level of pedal assistance were found to get moderate exercise while others’ heart rate response was too mild to count (rider height and weight can also play an important role in the number of calories burned). 

Across the board, the e-bike users burned about 30% fewer calories than those on road bikes but as with the participants in Cherry’s study, they reported having more fun. Other studies echo this sentiment, with many driving home the point that when bicycling is made easier and more enjoyable, courtesy of pedal assist, it’s more likely to become a part of people’s everyday lifestyle. 

While the mental health benefits of e-biking are harder to quantify, there is something to be said for a form of transportation that provides joy, allowing more people to better connect to the places they live. There’s plenty of research that points to the mental health benefits of spending time outdoors, including one 2019 study that links 120 minutes spent outside per week with elevated levels of health and well-being. Plus, physical activity in general has been shown to improve sleep, mood and cognitive functioning, as well as decrease stress and ease depression and anxiety.

Based on such research, Canadian doctors can now prescribe national park visits to patients. Anna Wassman, the business development manager at Bosch eBike Systems — which manufactures e-bike batteries, motors and displays for more than 70 brands globally — hopes to someday get to the point where doctors might also be able to prescribe e-bikes. In tandem with Cherry and others, Wassman is working to develop a long-term, large-scale scientific medical study to fill a current gap in the research. While it’s still in the conceptual stages, for there to be any sort of medical intervention, longitudinal evidence is needed.

“The adoption of e-bikes as the go-to health and wellness tool for the medical community — that’s the dream goal,” said Wassman. To help achieve that dream, Bosch believes insurance companies, benefits brokers and employers have a large role to play. “It’s lots of little pieces that all tie together to create a better world. We need to help people get there.”

For older adults, whose immune systems benefit from exercise, as well as folks with pre-existing conditions or joint pain, e-bikes are a low-impact way to stay healthy. Research also shows that outdoor e-bike exercise can help stroke, spinal cord injury survivors, Multiple Sclerosis patients, and people born with motor function disorders — as well as people recovering from more everyday injuries. Again, they’re also expensive. Since socioeconomic status is a known indicator of things like hypertension, heart disease, obesity and respiratory issues, e-bikes remain out of reach for many who would benefit most from their use.

In 2021, Biketown, the all-electric bike share system in Portland, Oregon, launched a prescribe-a-bike program to both increase access to e-bikes and improve public health. In partnership with the Multnomah County Health Department, Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Program and its student health centers, the two-year pilot is offering prescriptions for bike share for clinic patients and 16 and 17-year-old high school students. All prescriptions come with a free bike share membership, helmet and educational support.

According to Roshin Kurian, transportation demand management specialist at the Portland Bureau of Transportation, which manages Biketown, the clinic and student populations live in the same zip codes, one of the best-known indicators of poor health outcomes. “These are underserved communities that are more low income than the rest of the city and more ethnically diverse,” said Kurian. 

Thus far, the prescribe-a-bike program has 58 participants, all of whom agreed to have their ridership data tracked and to submit health surveys. Although prescribe-a-bike programs aren’t new — Boston, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York, have their own, and the U.K. announced a nationwide initiative in July 2021 — they are rare, and haven’t traditionally involved electric pedal-assist bikes. Kurian believes that Biketown’s all-electric fleet helped not only secure the initial buy-in from participants but will ensure that folks ride more often.  

“Once you get on an e-bike and you feel that pedal-assist and you're able to go up the hill, you're able to go further and that builds confidence,” said Kurian. “It’s a gateway drug to more activity and to better behavioral changes around your health.”

For children aged 6 through 17, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity each day. For adults, it’s 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity (and two days of muscle-strengthening activity) each week. Biketown’s prescriptions are in line with these guidelines, although Kurian acknowledges that for many folks, it can seem like a lot.

“It's a recommendation, so anything that we hit near that is great,” said Kurian. “It’s also probably more realistic if you’re using an e-bike.”

By focusing on youth and clinic patients with preexisting conditions, the study will showcase how electric bikes might work as both a preventative and curative intervention. The larger public health savings brought on by a large-scale shift to e-bikes is harder to quantify. According to a 2021 study conducted by epidemiological researchers at Colorado State University, bike share alone saves the U.S. $36 million in public health dollars every year. Researchers also found that bike share trips in the U.S. provide health benefits for bicyclists and those health benefits are greater than the risks, such as air pollution or injury from cars. 

Bike share systems that go electric consistently bring in more users — in 2019, when the Madison BCycle fleet in Madison, Wisconsin, went electric, usage more than doubled, and in New York City, electric-assist Citi Bikes see more than twice as many rides per day than traditional bikes. It follows that the more electric bikes there are on our streets, whatever the source, the larger the collective public health benefit. The more e-bikes swell in popularity, the more likely they are to play a role in helping reshape our streets to be more walkable and bikeable — which comes with health savings of their own. 

A widespread mode shift would also reduce emissions while redesigning our streets for bikes can help lower road fatalities all around. And if a future full of electric bicycles seems far-fetched, consider this: In Europe, e-bikes are projected to outsell cars — all cars, not just electric ones — by the middle of the decade. In the U.S., e-bike sales are outpacing electric car sales and are tracking towards 1 million annually. 

Electric bikes are proven to have the ability to help individuals, and getting more individuals on e-bikes has the ability to help our communities and the planet at large. The more people bicycling, in whatever capacity, the better.

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

BikeWalkKC and Safe Routes to School released a new publication designed for advocates that want to repeal and modify unsafe, racialized traffic laws.

The murder of George Floyd was the straw that broke many an advocate's back — passionate people across the country utilized the mainstream attention the tragedy garnered to shine a light on the racialized enforcement of many American laws. In the mobility space, there was a renewed effort to critically examine traffic laws related to walking and bicycling that fail to meet their intended safety goals and instead disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), as well as the unhoused and low-income communities. BikeWalkKC, alongside the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, recently released “Taking on Traffic Laws: A How-To Guide For Decriminalizing Mobility,” based on the organization’s experience reforming unjust laws locally. 

Since its founding, BikeWalkKC, based in Kansas City, Missouri, has centered equity in its work, lobbying for better infrastructure but also larger policy reform. In 2020, as Floyd’s murder sparked protests around the country, the Kansas City City Council adopted Resolution #200450, which directed city staff to review the full municipal code to identify elements of racist language as well as statutes that could disproportionately harm Black and brown residents. BikeWalkKC used the resolution as an opportunity to search for laws that could specifically be used to over-police BIPOC while walking or biking.

“We essentially identified three laws related to jaywalking, bike inspections and dirty wheels that needed to be modified or repealed,” said Michael Kelley, policy director at BikeWalkKC. “Over the course of the next few months, we were able to push for the introduction of legislation, build a coalition and ultimately, successfully advocate for those changes in May of 2021.”

In his new podcast, “Arrested Mobility,” researcher Charles T. Brown explores the adverse social, political, economic and health outcomes of over-policing BIPOC movement — whether on bikes, walking, running or driving — in the U.S. The first episode is all about jaywalking and showcases how while illegal in many places, jaywalking is inequitably enforced in areas with fewer sidewalks, signals and pedestrian crossing areas. Similarly, research shows that areas with less bike infrastructure experience disproportionate ticketing, compounding the effects of racially biased policing and transportation policies.

To showcase the inequitable enforcement of jaywalking laws in Kansas City specifically, BikeWalkKC obtained data from the municipal court (because the city doesn’t have local control over its police department, it’s incredibly difficult to secure arrest data). The data showed a definite racial bias in charges related to jaywalking: 65% of jaywalking tickets were given out to Black residents, even though they make up less than 30% of the city’s population. The other two laws identified as problematic pertained to dirty wheels, which made it illegal to drive a car, bike or other vehicle that deposited mud on city streets, and bike inspections, which allowed officers to stop someone biking if they believed the bike was in a state of disrepair. 

On paper, many bicycle laws — such as those for inspections or others that require people to wear helmets, use bike lights, obtain a bike license or register their bikes — seem like a great idea. After all, inspecting a bike that’s in poor shape might save someone from injury, helmets can protect our heads in the case of a crash, lights help bikers see and be seen, bike licenses can raise money for infrastructure and bike registrations safeguard people against theft. In reality, these laws are widely virtually unknown and rarely enforced. When they do get enforced, it’s usually to the detriment of BIPOC citizens or those experiencing homelessness.

Something like a bike inspection law can be used by police officers as a pretextual traffic stop, or the practice of using a minor traffic stop to investigate a more serious crime. These sorts of stops bring with them a myriad of risks: the disruption of a person’s daily affairs, policing for profit, overcriminalization of already marginalized groups and, in extreme scenarios, even policing killings. There is also evidence that a crime-fighting approach based on traffic stops is largely ineffective.

Importantly, bicycle laws and by association, pretextual stops, also gatekeep bicycling, ensuring that certain populations feel less safe traveling on two wheels, which hurts all of us working in the bike space. Suzanne Hogan is a community volunteer and shop coordinator at the 816 Bicycle Collective in Kansas City, a volunteer-run, DIY recycle bike shop that welcomes everyone and focuses on the empowerment and education of low-income bike commuters. 

“At the shop, one of the big things I hear all the time from our patrons is about bike lights — not having lights is an excuse for someone to get pulled over on their bikes,” said Hogan, noting that other stories she hears are a direct reaction to an unsafe urban bicycling environment. “I've heard many patrons say that they've been stopped by a police officer for violating a traffic law, like say riding on a sidewalk.”

All of this creates mental stress and anguish for these communities and a general feeling of being unsafe when trying to move around. While many of the incidents Hogan hears about aren’t codified in city law, they’re part of a larger culture that polices the mobility of lower-income individuals and BIPOC. Combatting arrested mobility requires a cultural approach (this includes shops like the 816 Collective, which helps build a more inclusive community) in addition to a policy approach, like the one taken by BikeWalkKC.

Following the organization’s success, calls began rolling in from advocates in places like Atlanta, and Denver, asking for advice on how they might recreate such wins in their cities. The guide for decriminalizing mobility was a response to inquiries and is broken up into three sections: The first being an explanation of how we have overpoliced traffic enforcement and how that disproportionately harms certain groups, the second detailing what BikeWalkKC did in Kansas City, and the third is a call to action, asking advocates to learn from what BikeWalkKC did and to apply it to their own communities.

“One of the big takeaways was the importance of building an effective and varied coalition,” said Kelley, noting that in addition to people from transportation, the Kansas City coalition included folks working in housing, livability and sustainability backgrounds. “Another big part is the importance of being willing and able to get the data and the stories earlier in order to help build and strengthen your case.”

Kelley adds that an important part of that story gathering is also guarding your own vulnerability — advocacy often requires people to explain and share parts of their own lived experiences that are difficult and that they are still sometimes working through. Even though advocacy work is important and requires us to use our voices, it’s important to practice self-care and limit the parts of ourselves we share.

“We wrote this guide for other advocates,” said Kelley. “If and when there are other communities that want to take these steps, here’s our detailed account of how you can get it done and do it better than us by avoiding the mistakes we made.”

Kelly and the other authors are also clear that this is a guide, not the guide for taking on traffic laws. Language and terminology will differ from place to place; someone might be looking at laws that are more expansive or more narrow depending on where you are. Even the way BikeWalkKC went through its municipal code searching for certain terms like “sidewalk” and “walking” might be replaced with “pedestrian path” or “crosswalk” elsewhere. Kelley is also adamant that it doesn’t have to be an organization or nonprofit leading the charge — a group of community members can make a difference.

“We want people to understand that there are multiple ways to do this work,” said Kelley. “We don't necessarily think that everyone has to do things the exact same way to get the same results. You can change things to better suit the nuances of the community you’re working in.”

The guide is itself an acknowledgment that the work doesn’t end in Kansas City. Even just outside of town, in Independence, Missouri, 37-year-old Justin Layton was tackled, tased, beaten and ultimately arrested by police in 2020 after being initially stopped for the crime of jaywalking. He’d like to see the entire Kansas City metro area decriminalize jaywalking — the authors of “Taking on Traffic Laws” are thinking even bigger.

“This is not something that just ends with Kansas City and it doesn't just end with BikeWalkKC,” said Kelley. “We want this guide to be a catalyst for similar changes across the country.” 

Check out “Taking on Traffic Laws: A How-To Guide for Decriminalizing Mobility,” from BikeWalkKC and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. 

Are you or any groups you know of working locally to repeal unjust traffic laws related to bicycling? We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line: kiran@peopleforbikes.org.

A How-To Guide for Decriminalizing Mobility

Using extensive research and data collection, PeopleForBikes' City Ratings program highlights communities that embrace the bicycle as a tool for mobility, economic growth and recreation.

For the sixth consecutive year, PeopleForBikes, in conjunction with Trek Bicycle, is proud to publish the findings from a year of research in a comprehensive guide to and ranking of 1,058 cities for biking in the United States. In 2022, the top three bikeable cities in the country are: Provincetown, Massachusetts; Davis, California; and Fayette, Missouri. 

PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings program highlights communities that embrace the bicycle as a tool for mobility, economic growth and recreation, while also suggesting that the vast majority of American cities and towns have yet to implement relatively simple changes that make communities more bikeable.

These results are the culmination of extensive research and data collection, including factors such as cities’ speed limits, existing infrastructure and overall safety, as well as community input on what people think about biking in their city. Cities are scored and ranked using a combination of PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis and Community Survey, resulting in an overall score of 1-100. 

“The Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) tool provides the basis for each city’s score, demonstrating how easy it is for residents to get to key services like grocery stores, employment, healthcare and more,” said Rebecca Davies, City Ratings program director. “Not only does the BNA highlight if riders can get to these places, it shows how safe it is to do so by ranking streets as high or low stress based on factors like the quality of bike infrastructure and street speed limits. When combined with our Community Survey, we are not only able to see what the maps of these cities tell us, but also what the people actually riding in these cities think about biking where they live, work and play.” 

Also included alongside the ratings are PeopleForBikes’ Best Places to Bike for 2022, 10 U.S. cities that all offer actionable lessons on improving bicycling locally. Focusing on youth engagement, connecting bike networks and building trails for all skill levels are just a few ways any city can become a best place to bike. 

“Our goal is to work with the bike industry, advocacy partners and elected leaders to make America the best place in the world to ride a bike,” said Jenn Dice, president and CEO of PeopleForBikes. “One of our main strategies to achieve this vision is prioritizing the construction of safe, connected bike infrastructure. By evaluating and comparing cities’ bike networks across the U.S., our City Ratings program helps benchmark progress and share lessons for success.” 

Trek Bicycle has been a long-time Coalition member and partner of PeopleForBikes and the City Ratings program and has once again underwritten the project for 2022 through a donation based on a portion of sales from their Bontrager helmet line. 

“At Trek, our mission is to get more people on bikes. If that’s going to happen, those people need great, safe places to ride in their community,” said Trek Bicycle’s VP of Advocacy, Bob Burns. “Our support of PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings is long standing and we feel our commitment to the program will accelerate investment in cycling infrastructure and help build a future where everyone has access to great places to ride.”

Not all cities in the United States were scored as favorable for biking, however, with Oak Park, Illinois; Mount Vernon, New York; and Pelham Manor, New York, rounding out the bottom three. Of the 1,058 American communities included in the survey, 95% garnered fewer than 50 points out of a possible 100 — a sign that the majority of U.S. cities have ample room for improvement in terms of bicycling infrastructure and safety. 

While these cities may currently lack the infrastructure and policies for excellent biking conditions, PeopleForBikes’ research shows there are several easy ways for a city to improve its score — most notably, and perhaps most easily, is lowering speed limits. “Respected studies from groups like American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the Lund Institute in Sweden highlight that just a 10% reduction in speed on streets results in 34% fewer fatal crashes,” said Davies. “Not only can cities quickly improve their scores by reducing speeds, they create safer places to ride in the process.”

Notable stats from this year’s research include Seattle, Washington’s five-point jump in score from 54 to 59, as well as consistent but smaller score increases from most large cities including: Brooklyn, New York; San Francisco, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Detroit, Michigan. The city with the highest Community Survey score (70) was Bentonville, Arkansas.

In addition to the 1,058 cities ranked in the United States, PeopleForBikes analyzed 47 cities in Canada. European and Australian results will be released later this year.

2022 CityRatings: The Best Places to Bike in the U.S.

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

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.”

Inclusive Biking

Sustainable Transportation

Electric Bikes

Bike Business

Recreational Bike Access

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Topics

City Riding

PeopleForBikes at Work on City Riding

News

Parking Reform is Key to Building Bike-Friendly Cities

How My Electric Bike Helped Me Heal

Asphalt Art Can Save Lives

The Health Benefits of Electric Bikes

How to Make Any City Better for Bicycling

A How-To Guide for Decriminalizing Mobility

2022 CityRatings: The Best Places to Bike in the U.S.

Slow Streets Pave the Way to Better Bike Cities

The Secret Behind Bentonville’s Success

The Importance Of Mapping Bicycling Data

Lessons From London’s Bike Surge

L.A. Researchers Hope to Make ‘Bikepooling’ a Thing

Better Bike Policy Can Prevent Deaths

PeopleForBikes’ 2021 Must-Reads

Austin Will Be America’s Next Great Biking City

Inclusion on Main Street

Does America Have a Big Bike Ego?

Our Top Vacation Spots for Biking

A Snapshot of Bicycling in 78 U.S. Cities

In Texas, A Bike Network Gets Bigger