A 1.5-mile stretch of Broad Street in Providence, Rhode Island, is slated for a holistic mobility upgrade and community engagement is an integral part of the plan.

In small towns and big cities across America, certain thoroughfares form the lifeblood of a place, serving as cultural and commercial hubs filled with restaurants, shops and places for the community to gather. Sometimes these streets define a particular neighborhood and other times they’re defined by a certain ethnic group or historic identity. In Providence, Rhode Island, Broad Street is such a place. 

Clocking in at roughly 4 miles, Broad Street maintains an international character, known for its large Asian markets, popular Dominican restaurants, numerous bodegas and lively street life. Compared to Providence and Rhode Island as a whole, Broad Street is incredibly diverse, with a primarily Latinx demographic, as well as large Black and Asian populations. Roughly 40% of Broad Street’s inhabitants are foreign-born (primarily Caribbean and Central American) and almost 35% live in poverty (the national average hovers around 15%). Additionally, some 40% of Broad Street community residents commute via walking, biking or transit and 25% of households do not have access to a car, significantly higher than the statewide and national averages. 

It’s these characteristics that, in 2017, inspired Mayor Jorge O. Elorza to rebrand Broad Street as Providence’s Latino Cultural Corridor, a move that accompanied $4.3 million in funding, the majority earmarked for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. The idea for developing Broad Street to become more bike and pedestrian-friendly really began in 2006, however, and in the 15 years since, has been pushed back and reimagined numerous times. The extended timeframe has provided ample opportunity for community engagement, and since 2019, the Providence Streets Coalition has taken on the bulk of that work. 

“The project development timeline has just been so long,” said Liza Burkin, lead organizer of the Providence Streets Coalition, noting that the city did a demonstration day in 2018 and still hasn’t started work. “We really felt like we needed to remind people of the entire timeline of all the public processes that have gone on over the last 15 years to get us to this point, including the demonstration day and all the safety data.”

The Providence Streets Coalition formed in 2019 as the city’s first mobility advocacy organization, establishing itself at the intersection of environmental and social justice. In the last couple of years, the group has brought that spirit to Broad Street. The core of the coalition's messaging has been driven by crash data, which highlights Broad Street's abysmal safety record for both pedestrians and bicyclists: Between 2009 and 2015, Broad Street experienced the greatest number of crashes involving people walking or riding a bicycle out of any corridor in Providence.

“We just had another fatality this summer and we had one of the City Council members get into a car crash on Broad Street,” said Burkin. “It’s a real safety problem and every passing year people understand that more and more.”

The coalition’s outreach also focuses on the fact that the city is positioning the Broad Street work as a holistic mobility project, as opposed to a bike lane project (although 3 miles of bike lanes are also part of the plan). Rather, the emphasis has been on the new crosswalks, traffic signals and bus islands, as well as the reconfiguration of everything in an integrated way, creating a balanced street for all users, drivers included. The current design even retains street parking on both sides of the road — based on feedback from residents and businesses — and instead will create bike lanes using space from a central turning lane, an unsafe and chaotic feature many folks are excited to get rid of. 

A 600-person phone poll conducted by the Providence Streets Coalition in March of this year, with oversamples of Latinx voters and those under 40, highlighted residents' support for new bicycle infrastructure. Interviews conducted in English and Spanish showed that 63% of people believe Providence should have more protected bike lanes that are separated from driving lanes, even if it means reducing driving lanes and less on-street parking. Additionally, 70% indicated that they would like to ride a bicycle more often, particularly if infrastructure designed to improve bike safety were built throughout the city. When it came specifically to the work proposed for Broad Street, 87% of residents were in favor and many said that they would ride their bikes instead of driving (45%), or that they'd shop and dine more on Broad street (50%), if there were more safe and accessible options. 

“We’re hoping to create a safe, beautiful street where the local businesses can really thrive,” said Burkin. “A street that attracts more people and gives them the ability to move quickly and easily.”

The bike lanes on Broad Street are part of a 75-mile network Providence is in the midst of building, offering greater connectivity for residents. Broad Street is an important thoroughfare and the new infrastructure will provide a crucial way for those on foot or bike to access its businesses, jobs, schools, community services and Roger Williams Park, the city’s largest greenspace.

“The park is flanked by highways and major streets and it's very difficult to get to via active modes if you don’t live right in the neighborhood,” said Burkin. “Connecting to Roger Williams Park is a big deal for the rest of the city and south Providence neighborhoods.”

The southside of Providence has been disinvested in for generations and the coalition consistently emphasizes the magnitude of the city’s investment in outreach, promoting safety first and foremost, but also how a revamped street will improve the neighborhood’s ability to flourish for decades to come. In order to celebrate the culture and history of the corridor, while sharing out the city’s plan, the Providence Streets Coalition created a virtual story map: “Broad Street Was, Is, And Will Be.” 

Comprehensive and colorful, the website tracks the history of everything from Native American displacement to redlining, moving on to the diversity that defines Broad Street today, as well as the safety data and economic demographics of the area. Finally, the site reminds folks of the city’s proposed redesign and all of the community engagement work that’s already been done, including the 2018 3D demonstration day where residents provided feedback in real-time.

A section of the Providence Streets Coalition’s website on Broad Street.

Recognizing that the public’s memory can be short, the Providence Streets Coalition took advantage of the project’s two-year delay due to COVID-19 to create the story map and promote it alongside its standard forms of outreach, including door knocking along the corridor, conducting one-on-one meetings with business owners, and biking a mobile community engagement trailer multiple times a week to block parties, farmers markets and outside of the nonprofit Youth in Action’s headquarters.

“We’re using a combination of in-person and virtual outreach to complement one another as the project nears construction,” said Burkin. “The website is the one cohesive place where people can access it all and we’re trying to get it out to as many people as possible.”

The coalition vetted the website with many of its community partners before launch, ensuring that the content was clear and the Spanish translation was as good as possible for the variety of ethnicities in the area. In addition to a coordinated email campaign and handing out postcards with QR codes at events such as the Dominican Parade, the coalition is preparing a texting campaign targeting 5,000 Broad Street residents and business owners. In addition to the website URL, the texts will contain information about the final community meeting, set to take place in the coming month. Although the project is currently out to bid and set to break ground as soon as October, the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and its Delta variant remain an ever-present variable.

Until construction is underway, the Providence Streets Coalition will continue its outreach efforts, canvassing the street and working in conjunction with organizations such as the Southside Cultural Center of Rhode Island and Community Angels. Although Burkin is optimistic about the engagement work that’s been done, she’s reluctant to be too congratulatory, noting that, “It won’t be a proven success for many more months — if not years.” After all, there are plenty of languages spoken outside of Spanish or English on Broad Street, including a variety of South Asian and West African languages, as well as Haitian Creole. For everyone that’s been engaged and included so far, there’s a neighbor that has not. As with all things community engagement, the work is ongoing and never done.

We culled the responses from our annual survey for city officials, painting a more nuanced picture of bicycling at the local level.

Every year, the PeopleForBikes City Ratings is a massive endeavor, utilizing a comprehensive, data-driven approach to evaluate and compare bicycling in U.S. cities and towns, pinpointing areas for improvement at the local level. One of our data inputs is the City Snapshot, a survey asking elected officials to detail what their cities are doing to improve bicycling locally. 

While the City Snapshot doesn’t affect scores, it does provide a valuable, measurable look at local progress. In a sea of quantitative data, it also serves as an opportunity to collect qualitative responses, painting a more nuanced picture of the state of bicycling in cities nationwide. The following insights are taken from 79 cities that submitted responses this year.

States represented: 31 (plus one response from Canada)

Sample job titles of respondents: transportation planner, bicycle planner, transportation engineer, active transportation program manager, sustainability specialist, bicycle and pedestrian outreach coordinator, transportation options coordinator, transportation advisory committee member.

The 2021 City Snapshot asked respondents to rate the quality of OpenStreetMap data for their city. OpenStreetMap is the primary data source we use to produce a city’s Bicycle Network Analysis score, which comprises each city’s Network Score in the City Ratings. OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps, meaning anyone can edit the data. 

Approximately one-quarter of respondents judged OpenStreetMap data to be “Good” for their city and nearly half deemed the data “Fair.” The remainder rated the data as “Poor,” “Don’t know” or were not familiar with OpenStreetMap. Based on this feedback, we see additional room to collaborate with cities, advocates and the civic tech community to further improve the data and our OpenStreetMap editing guidance.

The 2021 City Snapshot asked what types of projects cities completed in 2020 and planned for 2021. The responses documented below complement two surveys PeopleForBikes fielded in 2020 asking cities how their bicycle plans adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can find a summary of results from that research here: How Bicycling Changed During A Pandemic.

Additional completed and planned projects include: 

A cyclocross course in Fayetteville, Arizona.

Secure bike parking in Jersey City, New Jersey. 

Redesigned streets for outdoor dining and parklets in Santa Monica, California.

Designated parking zones for dockless bikes and scooters in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Road diets in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Cleveland, Ohio.

A children’s educational bike park in Tallahassee, Florida.

Code revisions in Lawrence, Kansas, to strengthen requirements for bike parking at private developments.

Repurposing a landfill in Conway, Arkansas, to create new mountain bike trails.

Check out NACTO’s Urban Bikeway Design Guide for project examples and best practices for implementation in any city.

Overall, the responding cities reported increases in fatalities and injuries for all modes of travel between 2018 and 2019, although outcomes varied widely by city. For instance, Tulsa, Oklahoma, countered the overall trend, counting five bicyclists deaths in 2018 and zero in 2019, and 44 all-mode fatalities in 2018 compared to 36 in 2019. 

The City Ratings score calculation no longer includes safety data and the City Snapshot will not request safety data in the future. However, closely tracking deaths and injuries is critical for cities to evaluate bicycle network outcomes and prevent future deaths and injuries through better road design. We know that 2020 was an especially deadly year for road users, including people on bikes, illustrating an urgent need to make our streets and intersections safer for people using all modes of transportation.

Cities that distinguished between incapacitating vs. non-incapacitating injury data: 37

For the first time, the City Snapshot asked an open-ended question about what cities are doing to address equity in their bike planning. We received a number of great responses demonstrating different approaches to incorporating equity into bicycling networks, programs and outreach. A few of these initiatives are summarized below.

New Orleans, Louisiana, applies a Bicycle Equity Index to identify areas to target for transportation improvements. The index includes five metrics that provide context for decision-making, such as transit dependence and environmental justice.

Madison, Wisconsin, applies a citywide tool to review programs using a racial equity and social justice lens. The city also works with Neighborhood Resource Teams to validate proposed changes.

Lawrence, Kansas, tracks equitable transportation access for disadvantaged communities with a particular focus on designated Environmental Justice Zones.

In Conway, Arkansas, a bike planner reviews crashes involving bikes to evaluate the role of the built environment, a practice that can identify the consequences of dangerous road design rather than focusing blame on people.

Lincoln, Nebraska, incorporates race and income demographics into project evaluation criteria and implementation.

Additional responses from Northampton, Massachusetts; Jersey City, New Jersey; Ferndale, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; Tallahassee, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma, noted that the cities prioritize bike projects in BIPOC and low-income communities.

Another new question this year gauged the usefulness of PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings when it comes to improving bicycling locally. Respondents cited a number of ways City Ratings supports their work, including:

Benchmarking progress against peer cities.

Creating competitive pressure to improve.

Serving as a promotional tool to engage the community and garner support.

Providing an annual tracking metric and “gut check.”

Collecting feedback from residents via the Community Survey.

Respondents also gave helpful feedback on how PeopleForBikes can improve the program:

Ease the burden of updating OpenStreetMap to generate more accurate network scores.

Draft a more consistent annual calendar for City Ratings deadlines, including the Community Survey, City Snapshot and OpenStreetMap updates.

Provide easier access to the underlying data that informs the scores.

Craft more detailed recommendations based on the results.

Better explain scores that stray far from expectations, particularly given the heavy influence of residential speed limits on overall scores.

Next year, we intend to further simplify and shorten the City Snapshot. We will remove questions about planned and completed infrastructure, bike share trips and safety data,

shifting the focus of the survey to ask questions that will help us improve Network Score accuracy and gather feedback on the City Ratings as an advocacy tool.

Thank you to the cities that submitted a City Snapshot in 2021 and in years past. We invite city officials to sign up to receive the 2022 City Snapshot, which will help PeopleForBikes further strengthen the City Ratings and capture the important work cities are doing to enable more people to ride bikes.

Not a city official? Support the City Ratings project by filling out our Community Survey or petitioning to add your city.

City officials sent the following photographs alongside their snapshot submissions. Imagine if all the amazing bike infrastructure showcased were actually from one (incredible) city!

Red Pole Park and multi-use path in Southfield, Michigan.

Off-street paths intersect in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

Protected bike lane in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Colonial Bridge bike/pedestrian overpass in Orlando, Florida.

Off-street lakefront path in Madison, Wisconsin.

Parking protected two-way bike lane in Staten Island, New York.

Protected bike lane in Boston, Massachusetts.

 Protected bike intersection in Fremont, California.

A bike/pedestrian underpass in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Two-way protected bike lane in Memphis, Tennessee.

Two-way protected bike lane in Eugene, Oregon.

A Snapshot of Bicycling in 78 U.S. Cities

Unlike their European counterparts, Americans appear to have inflated perceptions about the state of bicycling in the U.S. 

The release of the 2021 PeopleForBikes City Ratings featured a new way of calculating city scores, emphasizing the importance of building safe, comfortable and connected bike networks. The revised analysis incorporates only two metrics: the quality of a city’s bicycle network via the Network Score (worth 80% of a city’s total score) and community perceptions of bicycling via the Community Score (worth 20% of a city’s total score).

Diving into the numbers, cities’ Network Scores generally aligned with common perspectives of great places to bike. Since this was our first year going global, we were also able to compare U.S. scores to well-established bicycling meccas across the pond. European top performers like Utrecht and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Antwerp, Belgium and Copenhagen, Denmark all far outscored U.S. favorites including Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Boulder, Colorado, and Davis, California when it came to their networks. 

Looking at Community Scores, however, we found a much more surprising trend. The top 10 Community Scores among European cities ranged from 56 to 66 out of a possible 100, while top performing American cities were higher, spreading from 68 to 73. Cities with the highest Community Scores in the U.S. — including places like Park City, Utah, Fort Collins, CO, and Fayetteville, Arkansas — did not match cities with the highest Network Scores, while nearly all of the European cities that scored a top 10 Network Score also ranked in the top 10 for their Community Score.

The data begs the question: Do Americans think our cities are better for biking than they actually are? To dive deeper into the possible differences between U.S. and European perceptions of bicycling, we spoke with Dr. Tara Goddard, assistant professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University, whose work focuses on transportation planning, road safety and traffic psychology and behavior.

“There are cultural biases that [make it so] Americans are more likely to overestimate. We’re highly motivated to rate ourselves well,” said Dr. Goddard. “However, everyone is willing to complain on a survey — just look at Yelp. So, there might be a potential respondent bias in who is actually taking the survey.”

Goddard explained that U.S. respondents may not be intentionally overrating a city, but simply responding to the micro environment they ride in versus the macro environment of city-wide biking measured by the Network Score. If the 10 square blocks where a respondent spends the majority of their time biking are made up of low-stress, bikeable streets, it makes sense that they rate it well. They aren’t incorrect in their opinion, but their neighborhood-level view of bicycling usually does not equally correlate to how good their city is for biking as a whole. Additionally, survey respondents may also conflate the quality of a city’s infrastructure for biking for transportation with their experiences riding recreationally.

On the flip side, European cities’ lower Community Scores may reflect different travel experiences. “Europeans travel to other countries more. They have more of a sense of comparison,” said Goddard. “A European completing the survey has likely been to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. and seen first hand what good bike networks look like. The U.S. is a large country, and there’s much less basis for comparison. An American’s frame of reference for what ‘good’ looks like is so different.”

Political leaders are moved to take action and create change when the public demands it. How do we encourage riders who already think their cities are great for bikes to keep pressing for a high-quality bike network in their city? According to Goddard, bike share is helping pave the way when it comes to creating that demand for quality bicycle infrastructure. “When you don’t bike for transportation, you’re not really seeing the full picture of your city’s bike infrastructure,” said Goddard, noting that recreational riders have the ability to pick and choose their route, avoiding unsafe streets, where point A to point B riders usually only have one way to go. “Bike share is getting more people on bikes on real infrastructure around their city, showing them there is truly room for improvement.”

Goddard also says cities need to be willing to make the investment in new and improved infrastructure, showing riders who may not have experienced great urban bike infrastructure in a city like Antwerp or Copenhagen what’s possible. “The real challenge is showing people how bad their current infrastructure is without making them unsafe,” said Goddard. “We have to find ways to get quality infrastructure in place to create real change. By working with city leaders on this investment, we can show these riders the way.”

Ultimately, U.S. cities’ high Community Scores and low Network Scores may not reflect a big bike ego, but rather the lack of world-class bike cities close to home to serve as a model for future development. Respondent biases towards hyperlocal and recreational riding experiences may further skew results. Network Scores indicate that U.S. cities need to build a lot of protected bike lanes and off-street paths to rival the bike networks in the best European cities. Thankfully, U.S. cities can look abroad for recent examples of rapid infrastructure deployment in places like Paris, France, and Sevilla, Spain, which have both demonstrated that change can happen quickly when the public demands safer streets and city officials commit to building them.

Watch the video below to learn more about the importance of building bicycle infrastructure fast, and check out the PeopleForBikes’ Advocacy Academy for more case studies, explanations of the City Ratings program and other tips for building great bike cities.

The $547 billion INVEST in America Act offers promising funding for connecting our nation.

On Friday, June 4, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released the INVEST in America Act, a five-year, $547 billion transportation reauthorization bill. This is the House counterpart to the Senate Environment and Public Works’ Committee’s Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act (which we wrote about here). There are some differences between the two on what federal investments and commitments they propose for bike infrastructure, so here’s a finer look at some of the details.

A massive win in this bill is the inclusion of $1 billion for a brand new program that will build connections between bike lanes, sidewalks and trails to create complete active transportation networks. This is similar to the proposed investment in the Senate’s bill and will be a critical tool to meet the rising demand for safe, connected places to bike nationwide. You can read more in an op-ed we co-wrote in The Hill alongside our partners at the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and America Walks. This $1 billion in new funding for bike networks is an increase from the $250 million offered in the House last year (which we wrote about here), thanks to the growing voice of active transportation advocates across the United States. 

This bill also matches the Senate’s when it comes to increasing funding for the Transportation Alternatives Program, the largest source of federal funding for bike infrastructure. A main difference with the House bill is that it’s not bipartisan like the Senate’s. Questions on how the two committees, parties and chambers eventually negotiate the differences in their bills, and how to pay for these policies and programs, certainly remain.

Beyond funding, the INVEST in America Act updates classifications for electric bicycles within two important programs for bike infrastructure. PeopleForBikes has been working at the state level to update electric bicycle definitions for more than six years, and more than 30 states have adopted model, three-class electric bicycle language in their transportation codes.

Bringing that advocacy to the federal level, we are pleased to see the three-class electric bicycle definition included in the INVEST in America Act under the Transportation Alternatives Program and in a critical classification update in the Recreation Trails Program. 

As the use of electric bicycles grows for both transportation and recreation across the nation, our policies need to adapt and evolve to make it easier to build trails and define access. We’re glad to see the INVEST in America Act meet the increased demand with updated definitions and classifications of electric bicycles. 

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a markup for this bill on June 9, and we’ll be watching to see what amendments are offered and what the committee’s vote will look like. We will be sharing our analysis live on Twitter, @pfbpolicy, for anything related to bike infrastructure and electric bicycles, and we’re optimistic that the bill will advance out of committee. 

House Committee Transportation Bill Makes Big Strides for Bikes

A focus on safe, connected bike networks helped boost these medium-sized cities to top spots in our 2021 City Ratings.

Now in its fourth year of analyzing, evaluating and comparing great cities for bicycling, our annual City Ratings program utilized a new and improved rating system for 2021. With an emphasis on safe, connected places to ride, a city’s Network Score makes up 80% of its overall score. Using data from PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis, or BNA, the Network Score measures the quality and connectivity of a city’s bike network — the bike lanes, paths, trails and neighborhood streets someone on a bike can use to access everyday destinations. 

The U.S. cities below range in population from 50,000 to 300,000 and all share one thing in common: a dedication to creating great bike networks. 

For Santa Monica, a coastal beach town in Southern California surrounded on three sides by Los Angeles, the first big effort for better bicycling came when the city passed its Bike Action Plan in 2011. The plan outlined the city’s goals for getting more people on bikes, making bicycling more convenient, creating a safe bike network and establishing a local bike share program. 

Santa Monica started small with low-cost, programmatic work such as offering bike valet services at big community events, as well as installing more bike racks at key locations around town. These smaller projects complemented the larger work of implementing bike infrastructure, and, over the last decade, Santa Monica has seen a steady trickle of bike shops and organizations popping up around the city. “Bicycling is now woven into the urban fabric of Santa Monica,” said Kyle Kozar, senior transportation manager and bike program coordinator. 

Kozar credits Santa Monica’s idyllic location, infrastructure and year-round sunshine for the city’s relatively quick adoption of bicycling. Compared to other nearby Southern California destinations, infamous for nauseating traffic congestion and miles upon miles of concrete, Santa Monica has a lot of greenways and protected bike lanes, making it easy to traverse the beach town by bike.

Last October, the city council approved amendments to the Bike Action Plan, which looked at what Santa Monica’s already accomplished and what needs to be reprioritized. “We laid out a long-term vision for expanding our low-stress network,” said Kozar. “We’d like to build out 15 miles of new protected bikeways in the next five years.”

Going forward, Kozar says Santa Monica’s mission is to make bicycling more inviting for people of all ages and abilities. “We get there by creating infrastructure that is really inviting,” he said. “There are so many reasons for people to get out and experience Santa Monica by bike.”

Set against the picturesque background of the Flatirons in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder, Colorado, has a rich history of bicycling that dates back to the late 1960s. Today, the city is home to 65 miles of multi-use paths that feature more than 80 underpasses and form the backbone of Boulder’s bicycle infrastructure. 

“Over the years, Boulder has adopted a belt and suspenders approach to infrastructure or the construction of multi-use paths adjacent to conventional bike lanes,” said Dave Kemp, senior transportation planner for the city of Boulder. “This approach has helped all types of cyclists feel confident and safe in terms of getting around by bike.”

In addition to its doubled-down efforts on building safe, comfortable places for people to ride, Kemp believes the bicycling culture of Boulder has elevated biking as a transportation mode in general. “There are lots of us [bicyclists] — 20 times the national average, in fact,” said Kemp. “This creates a ‘safety in numbers’ effect and most people driving know to look for bicyclists everywhere.”

Kemp notes that the city’s embrace of electric bicycles has also had a huge impact. Boulder was the first city in Colorado to allow electric bikes on their multi-use path system, and in recent months it’s been working to evolve and refine its shared micromobility program to include an all-electric bike fleet by summer 2021. Looking to the future, Kemp is encouraged by the city’s ability to leverage local dollars and grant funds for bike-related projects. Community Cycles, a local nonprofit bike shop and advocacy group, recently won a grant through the Colorado Department of Energy to purchase e-bikes for underserved community members and essential workers in the Boulder region. 

“We are also cross-pollinating with other programs in the Transportation Division to enhance bicycle facilities when and where feasible,” said Kemp. “We are in the process of constructing our first protected intersection and we hope the project evaluation will result in installing more of these throughout Boulder at locations that really need it to improve safety.” 

Carmel, Indiana, a town of just under 100,000 half an hour north of Indianapolis, began its journey in bicycling in 1996 with the construction of the Monon Trail. A former railway line, the Monon is a paved, multi-use trail that stretches 25 miles from the town of Sheridan to the state capital, passing through the center of Carmel along the way.

“With the construction of such a popular amenity like the Monon, our biggest project became getting people to the trail safely,” said David Littlejohn, transportation systems administrator for Carmel. “We developed our alternative transportation plan in the early 2000s, and since then, the implementation of multi-use paths and expansion of our bicycle and pedestrian network through city projects or private development has been a key priority. Twenty years later, we have nearly 220 miles of paths and greenways throughout Carmel.”

When Carmel was initially developed, like most suburban communities it was car-centric. According to Littlejohn, an emphasis on interconnected, multi-use paths has allowed for nearly every resident to be within a seven-mile bike ride from the center of town. He also notes that some car-focused infrastructure has made Carmel safer for bikes. “We pride ourselves on being the roundabout capital of the U.S. — our 139th roundabout is getting built out this summer,” said Littlejohn. “The community becomes more bikeable when everyone approaching an intersection has to slow down.”

Littlejohn, who has worked for the city for more than 15 years, says Carmel is an ever-growing community both for bikes and in general. “We’re always working on improving our network and the ability for people to use it,” he said. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve built about 10 miles of new trails each year. We want to continue that momentum.”

Located directly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., Arlington, Virginia, is home to more than 230,000 residents, as well as the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. Like all cities featured on this list, Arlington boasts a robust bike network, featuring 30 miles of bike lanes, 52 miles of off-street trails and many more miles of low-stress, residential streets.

In addition to its extensive network, in 2009 the Arlington County Community Services Bureau launched BikeArlington, a program focused on helping promote bicycling for all ages and abilities. In 2010, the organization was also involved in the launch of the D.C. metro area’s Capital Bikeshare, the first major U.S. bike share program in the country.

“We have an incredibly knowledgeable and engaged advocacy community, many of whom volunteer on the County’s Bicycle Advisory Committee,” said Henry Dunbar, director of active transportation operations for Arlington County Commuter Services. “There are also scores of volunteers that organize to support bike events and facilities, like the Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail, and the annual group that coordinates the Freezing Saddles competition, an annual team competition to see who can ride the most miles between January 1 and the first day of Spring.”

Looking ahead, Arlington recently updated its Master Transportation Plan to emphasize expanded bike routes and protected bike lanes. In an effort to help make bicycling more equitable, Arlington promotes the Capital Bikeshare for All program, which makes annual memberships to the system available to low-income residents for just $5/year.

Policywise, Dunbar sees a bright future for Arlington. In 2019, the county board voted to adopt Vision Zero — a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all — and in May 2021, it approved an action plan to achieve it by 2030. According to Dunbar, “This has the potential to be the biggest policy shift toward improving bicycle and pedestrian safety we have seen in many years.”

Berkeley, California, located in the Bay Area just northeast of San Francisco, is a true 15-minute city. Thanks to good buy-in from local leadership and a connected network of low-stress neighborhood streets, the university town sees high levels of ridership. “If you’re on a bike, you can be pretty much anywhere you need to be quickly,” said Ben Gerhardstein of Walk Bike Berkeley, an all-volunteer-led advocacy organization promoting safe, low-stress and fun active transportation in the city.

Most essential services are within an easily bikeable distance of residents, and thanks to Berkeley's “Bike Boulevards,” the city’s network of low-stress neighborhood streets, there are usually multiple ways to safely reach a destination. “You’re not locked into being on a four-lane arterial street,” said Gerhardstein. To create the Bike Boulevards, Berkeley relied on aggressive traffic calming measures on existing city streets, in conjunction with signs and pavement markings to prioritize bicycle traffic.

This ease of bikeability, combined with the Bay Area city’s temperate climate and easy-on-the-eyes locale, lends itself to a lot of locals choosing to get out on two wheels. Some 10% of Berkeley residents travel to work by bike, among the highest rates of bike commuting in the U.S. Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín doesn’t even have a driver’s license, choosing instead to get about by electric bicycle. 

Borrowing from the Critical Mass culture of nearby San Francisco, Berkeley’s East Bay Bike Parties involve a massive gathering of riders celebrating all things bikes. “It’s a monthly event with the most diverse group of people riding bikes and having fun together,” said Gerhardstein. And around town, it's as common to see college students getting to class as it is to see parents hauling toddlers on a cargo bike. Berkely is also reimagining the way it does traffic enforcement through BerkDOT, all with the aim of making streets safer for its Black and brown residents.

“There’s always people on bikes from all walks of life,” said Gerhardstein. “Berkeley wants biking to be safe for everyone.”

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

These seven European cities are role models when it comes to great bicycling. Here’s what U.S. cities can learn from them.

New this year, our annual City Ratings program scored 30 European cities across nine countries, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. Whether they have a long history of bicycling, like Copenhagen and Utrecht, or have just turned their focus to bicycling, like Paris and Barcelona, most cities on this list outscore their U.S. peers by double digits. What’s their secret? We’ve identified key lessons from seven European cities that are integral to building great bike communities anywhere.


Every day, more than 125,000 people bike to work, school, public transportation, shops or home in Utrecht, a city just south of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. With a total population of just under 360,000, it’s easy to see why the Dutch city ranked number one overall in our 2021 City Ratings.

Like other wealthy European cities, Utrecht was incredibly car-friendly in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the rising gas prices of the 1970s, combined with an uptick in traffic-related child deaths, led to national policies that re-prioritized urban spaces for walking, biking and public transit. Today, 98% of Utrecht households own at least one bike, and nationally in the Netherlands bikes outnumber people. 

Utrecht spends an estimated $55 million per year building and improving its bike infrastructure and facilities. By comparison, Portland, Oregon, a city nearly twice the size of Utrecht, only spends about $30 million annually. According to the local Dutch government, however, the benefits of a healthy, biking population far outweigh the cost — the estimated annual savings from reduced air pollution and healthcare costs related to increased bicycling in the city is $300 million. But It’s not just bike lanes that get and keep more people riding. In Utrecht, an emphasis on the entire cycling experience, including bike parking, is key to its massive success. 

In 2019, the city unveiled the world’s largest bicycle parking garage under Utrecht Central Station, the city’s main transit hub. The massive, three-story structure can house more than 12,500 bikes and is easily accessible from both street level and the train station. Across the city, digital signs point bike riders to the nearest available bike parking, including the number of available spots. All municipal bike parking in Utrecht is free of charge, too, highlighting the city’s commitment to prioritizing the use of bikes.

What American cities can learn: Making biking better means more than just building bike lanes — it’s about improving the entire bicycling experience. Massive investments in safe, convenient and free bike parking ensures riders are prioritized on and off their bikes.

Between 2005 and 2010, Sevilla, a city of nearly 700,000 in the southwest of Spain, created a 120-kilometer (75-mile) network of protected on-street bike lanes, eliminating 5,000 parking spaces along the way. The result? A fivefold increase in cycling trips. In 2006, approximately 13,000 trips were taken by bike daily. By 2011, that number increased to 72,000. 

Rapid network expansion with a focus on connectivity are key to Sevilla’s success. The city went from having almost no dedicated bike facilities to a citywide bike network in just a few years. In 2007 alone, Sevilla built 40 miles of protected bike lanes, a 542% increase over the existing network miles. This high-speed buildout didn’t come as a financial burden to the city, either. Sevilla’s entire bike network only cost the city $40 million — a fraction of the cost of proposed car-centric highway projects, with far more benefits to locals and tourists alike.

Recently Sevilla drafted a new bicycle plan, complete with expansion plans for the network, as well as new, in demand bike parking structures in neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and public transit stations across the city. Aiming to double the rate of bicycling by 2022, Sevilla is now focusing on making bicycling a safe and convenient option for more residents.

To learn more about how the Spanish city accomplished its rapid infrastructure buildout, check out our feature on Sevilla in our Advocacy Academy series “Lessons From the Best Biking Cities.”

What American cities can learn: It doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time or money to build out a high-quality network. Focusing on the creation of safe, protected bike lanes can lead to a massive increase in ridership in just a few years.

The Danish capital of Copenhagen is known for being one of the safest, greenest, most prosperous and most egalitarian cities in the world. But this transformation didn’t happen overnight — Copenhagen is the product of more than 50 years of dedicated investment and hard work. 

Starting in the 1970s, Copenhagen gradually began replacing parking lanes and parking lots with protected bike lanes and public cafes. Traffic speeds fell, and the city became quieter and cleaner, a place where Danes wanted to live and work and tourists wanted to visit. Today, nearly 300 miles of elevated cycle tracks, carefully planned intersections and convenient bike parking prioritizes biking above all other forms of transportation. Bicycling is the fastest, easiest and most convenient way to move around the city.

Copenhagen has normalized bicycling as a primary means of transportation for people of all ages and abilities and made the city a better place to live in the process. By building an entire city with business districts and entertainment hubs that don’t have to be surrounded by parking lots, Copenhagen has made its streets safer and more alive. Today, bikes outnumber cars six-to-one, and Copenhagen is one of the happiest and healthiest cities in the world.

Copenhagen has an annual budget of $12 million specifically dedicated to bicycle infrastructure, much of which has recently funded bicycle and pedestrian bridges. And even with more than half of its residents commuting by bike, more and more people continue to take up biking — in 2016, for the first time, the number of bicycles crossing the city on a daily basis surpassed the number of cars. Copenhagen is living proof that even the best can continue to improve.

Want to learn more about what makes Copenhagen a model city for great biking? Hear from Marie Kåstrup, head of Copenhagen’s bicycle program, in our Advocacy Academy series “Lessons From the Best Biking Cities.”  

What American cities can learn: Normalizing bike riding is key to building a great bike city. Breaking down stigma starts with building great infrastructure and creating a network that’s easily accessible to people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. This leads to safer, more livable cities.

In 2015, newly elected Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced big plans to transform Paris into a more people-friendly city that caters to bicyclists and pedestrians. Her initiative to improve bicycling, Plan Vélo, included doubling the size of the bike network from 435 miles to 870 miles, fixing the deteriorating local bike share program and creating 10,000 new bike parking spots across the city, all within the span of five years. 

Since then, Paris has invested $178 million in projects to incentivize residents to bike, including pumping $23.8 million into a subsidy program that helps pay for bike repairs and tune-ups for local residents in September 2020. In response to COVID-19, the city turned 31 miles of traffic lanes into dedicated cycling lanes, and while originally temporary, local leadership announced plans to make the changes permanent last June. Mayor Hidalgo also recently pushed forward a proposal that would ban vehicle through traffic in the city center, creating a Limited Traffic Zone that prioritizes bicyclists, pedestrians and other non-motorized road users. Another pledge by the mayor promises to remove 140,000 on-street parking spaces throughout the city, taking street space back from cars and allowing more room for bike lanes, bike parking, green spaces and other public amenities.

All of this hard work is paying off. Since the beginning of the pandemic, bicycling rates across Paris have soared, with 6 out of 10 users on the city’s new bike lanes having never biked before. And importantly, thanks to specific requirements for gender equality outlined in the Plan Vélo — protected bike lanes but also better street lights and more access to electric bike share — the number of women bicycling has risen. 

What American cities can learn: Strong buy-in from local female leadership combined with comprehensive plans to reshape how people move around in a city can lead to tremendous outcomes, including less traffic, cleaner air, healthier citizens and an uptick in female riders.

In spring of 2020, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, released “Streetscape for London,” a detailed plan outlining projects and other initiatives to create more space for people to safely walk, cycle, scoot and wheel their way around the city, helping to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Soon after, Transport for London, the governmental body responsible for implementing the projects, got to work. By design, the main projects were quite simple: Build out a network of temporary cycle lanes and routes, widen sidewalks, and create Low-Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs) by restricting vehicle through traffic on low-speed side streets.

As hoped, these projects helped satiate the increased demand for places to safely walk and bike, as scores of Londoners turned away from the city’s well-established public transportation options amid social distancing requirements. Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner, shared that the city saw a 200% increase in cycling compared to pre-pandemic numbers, touting the 100 kilometers (62 miles) of new bike lanes and 70 LTNs as reasons for the increased ridership. 

As the effects of the pandemic begin to wane, Transport for London s beginning the process of gathering public feedback on whether to make permanent, amend or remove the infrastructure and traffic calming measures installed in 2020. While there is pushback about certain bike lanes and whether or not the money involved in Streetscape for London was well spent, initial research suggests that the LTNs are popular. The main complaints are around inequitable distribution and the lack of public outreach prior to implementation.

What American cities can learn: Acting quickly and prioritizing all road users can assist in larger public health initiatives. While not every initiative is going to be a massive success, implementing projects equitably and soliciting community engagement throughout their lifespan is key to making sure infrastructure actually serves residents. 

Antwerp, a Belgian port city with a history dating back to the Middle Ages, has 700 kilometers (435 miles) of bike lanes, which account for nearly half of its municipal streets. That expansive network has paid off with an astonishingly high mode share for bicycling: nearly 30% of Antwerp residents commute by bike, 36% bike to school and 28.6% of all trips in the city are taken on two wheels. And the city is continuously improving.

In 2015, Antwerp released its long-term bicycle policy plan, which focuses on the completion of a safe and well-connected bike network. The plan targets missing, weak or unsafe connections within the existing network and includes specific details on what bike infrastructure is needed depending on the speed of the road. For example, 30 km/h is suitable for mixed travel with cars, 50 km/h calls for dedicated on-street bike lanes and 70 km/h requires separated, protected infrastructure. Antwerp has also set a long-term goal of lowering speed limits to 30 km/h on 95% of all city streets.

For those looking to travel around Antwerp by bike, the city offers a route planner where riders can choose from one of four different route options. “Shortest route” is based solely on kilometers, “fastest route” follows the city’s bike network as much as possible, “comfortable route” avoids cobblestone roads, unpaved paths and roads with fast traffic and “junction route” offers scenic rides. Additionally, Antwerp is expanding its Velo bike share system and upping its bicycling education programs for youth and adults — ensuring that biking remains accessible to everyone. 

What American cities can learn: An expansive, well-connected network combined with low-speed limits helps bicyclists feel safe and comfortable no matter where they need to go. Route-finding services, educational initiatives and bike share ensure journeying on two-wheels is an option for all residents. 

Barcelona, situated on Spain’s northeastern coast in the Catalonia region, is one of Europe’s most densely populated cities. With around 1.6 million people, Barcelona has the EU’s highest density of cars, resulting in some of the worst air pollution and noise pollution levels in Europe. When the pandemic hit, it spurred conversations around the importance of natural environments and clean air, forcing city leaders to begin drafting plans for improvement. 

The Catalonian capital recently published its 10-year plan for making the city more green, prioritizing pedestrians, bicyclists and other road users over cars. The main focus of the policy centers around “superblocks,” which groups together regions of the city by nine square blocks, closing them to through traffic and promoting outdoor wellness with the inclusion of bike lanes, play areas and green spaces. Although cars aren’t banned completely from the superblocks, most parking spaces are eliminated and the zones as a whole give priority to people. 

Six superblocks currently exist across the city, with 11 more planned for the next three years. That number could exceed 500 if the plan is completed in its entirety, a number that would correlate to the prevention of 667 premature deaths annually and a 200-day extension on the average life expectancy of locals, according to the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. While Barcelona is far from that goal, the project has gained widespread support from locals.

What American cities can learn: Public space is public health. Open, green spaces throughout a city provide residents with places to recreate, relax and take a breath of fresh air, correlating to a happier, healthier population. 

Topics

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Lessons From Europe