In 2019, the Crescent City joined forces with Toole Design to let equity lead in the planning of its bike network.

Many cities have taken to using the term “equity” when describing transportation priorities and “equitable” when referring to the types of transit systems or bike networks they hope to create.

“The problem with that is that you have to define ‘equity’ and what it means in each community,” said Jennifer Ruley, mobility and safety lead engineer with the City of New Orleans. “We had to figure out how to define it for the purposes of planning out our bike network, particularly around access and safety and all the reasons people either choose to use a bike or have to use one.”

While researching, Ruley stumbled upon the League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Equity Index (BEI), a 2015 framework that attempted to measure equity in a city’s bike network using U.S. Census American Community Survey data. Compiled by Rachel Prelog, at the time an urban planning student at Texas A&M University, the BEI relies on five demographic indicators: transit dependency (those without access to a household vehicle), children under the age of 18, adults 65 and older, race/ethnicity and income below the federal poverty level. The BEI then determines where residents with those demographic characteristics live relative to the location of existing bike infrastructure. In this context, equity was determined by who has infrastructure near where they live and who does not.

At the end of 2019, Toole Design was brought in to collaborate with New Orleans on its bike plan, helping with all facets of the process, from the initial network analysis to the design of low-stress, separated bike lanes. Included in its scope of work was an equity analysis, which ultimately became one of the guiding principles of the plan alongside such factors as whether or not potential routes addressed connectivity, were useful or could be built in a timely manner. Using the League’s BEI as a starting point, New Orleans was keen on creating its own index. 

“The conversation evolved to how we wanted to prioritize the different components of the analysis — whether we wanted them to be equally weighted or not — and what that might look like for New Orleans,” said Ruley. “We identified six or seven different hotspots or areas where the equity analysis was really pointing towards as priorities for bike network connectivity.”

Toole began working with city staff to draft a network plan that would help connect these hotspots to the proposed bike network. Ultimately, the firm identified more than 550 miles that would need to be built or upgraded, including 285 miles of protected bike lanes. New Orleans had already committed to building out 75 miles within a two-year timeframe, so the challenge then became prioritizing 75 miles of projects within that network that made meaningful connections from the get-go and could be implemented quickly. 

To identify priority projects, Toole adjusted the original BEI’s methodology to more heavily weigh the needs of people who experience compound disadvantages that reduce access to transportation. 

“When we have somebody without a car, that’s under 18, that’s a person of color and living below 80% of the median household income — they have several of these factors that increase their potential reliance on transit, walking or biking,” said Toole Project Manager Adam Wood. “We wanted to see those areas of extreme [need] and have that factor in some way.”

Ruley hoped to also identify communities overburdened with chronic diseases, but having previously worked for a public health nonprofit, she recognized the struggle to accurately obtain good data at a sub-neighborhood level. Since race and socioeconomic status are known indicators of things like hypertension, heart disease, obesity and respiratory issues, the BEI got the city closer to identifying an array of concerns without having all the data available. 

“Health data was important to us so that we weren’t just focusing on transportation but biking as a tool for fitness and health,” said Ruley, adding that when COVID-19 hit, many of the hotspot communities saw more deaths. “It just reiterated the need to think about what we do using a bigger picture.”

After running its revised BEI, the city began a community engagement campaign, letting people know that it was using data to guide its decisions. By reaching out to nonprofits and community groups, the city worked to cultivate partnerships with local advocacy organizations and build trust, operating transparently and incorporating feedback. 

“Building those relationships was crucial to getting more people involved,” said Ruley. “It paid off in ways we didn’t expect, such as converting a number of people and other organizations that didn’t directly align with bicycle improvements but they aligned in a different way, whether it was physical health or economic impacts.”

Although the city is behind schedule on the completion of its 75-mile network, largely due to complications presented by the pandemic and Hurricane Ida, it was able to complete the Algiers Protected Bike Lane Network. The Algiers neighborhood, one of the city’s oldest and the only one located on the West Bank of the Mississippi, had a high BEI score and was ripe for investment. The lane build-outs there are a shining example of what New Orleans set out to do: Engage the community around safe, connected bikeways that could be built fast in areas that needed them the most. 

Learn more about the city’s accomplishments in Algiers in our Advocacy Academy video below:

While the city and Toole are happy with how the BEI turned out and New Orlean’s bike plan in general, Ruley and Wood see room for improvement. In our conversations, both noted the limitations of census data: It shows where people live, but it doesn’t show the routes they would take to access essential services, such as grocery stores, medical facilities or schools. In some cases, building a connection through a wealthy, white neighborhood might actually be the best option for increasing access for historically underserved neighborhoods.

“The data isn’t telling you where people go, need to go or would like to go,” said Ruley, touching on the fact that better data is needed alongside a comprehensive outreach strategy. “Part of the work is also figuring out a way to engage people around those issues.”

Higher quality transportation data — such as that generated through surveys, focus groups, polling or traffic data — is costly to obtain but would greatly benefit any index. Community meetings that touch on this information are biased towards those who show up or are invited to attend, so while important, they’re no stand-in for better data. Ideally, bicycle plans should incorporate both. In addition to procuring more detailed data related to people’s travel patterns, Ruley wishes she had been able to do more engagement, perhaps offering childcare or free food as incentives for folks to attend meetings. 

Still, New Orleans remains a prime example of how data can be baked into a bicycle plan with the overall goal of creating more equitable outcomes. Both Ruley and Wood view the New Orleans BEI as a good first-case study and Toole continues to refine its approach to evaluating equity in other cities, including Austin, Texas. As another example, he points to Portland, Oregon’s Equity Matrix, which used census data in a similar fashion. One of Wood’s chief regrets, however, pertains to the way planners and policymakers tend to stop at measuring where people live, when truly analyzing equity requires measuring the outcomes that decisions have on peoples' lives.

“It’s problematic to throw the word ‘equity’ in — it implies putting a bike lane in a neighborhood will inherently increase equity when that’s not really true,” said Wood. “I regret that we couldn't go further to truly measure the equity of current conditions and of the [bike] plan's decisions, because we were limited in data, time and resources. As planners, we want repeatable processes for consistency, but they can overly simplify an incredibly complex challenge.”

In New Orleans, the BEI factored into infrastructure and planning decisions, which was an appropriate use and should be a baseline best practice for any city. For comprehensive guidance on incorporating equity throughout the planning process, Wood recommends referencing research — such as “Equity Analysis in Regional Transportation Planning Processes” or “Performance-Based Methodology for Evaluating Equity for Transportation System Users” — and adapting ready-made methodologies to the place and project resources. 

The BEI’s limitations notwithstanding, all cities should use data to help guide actions with the intent of increasing equity. Not only is it a known method for removing bias in the planning process, but it will always be preferable to simply paying lip service without any structure or framework. What New Orleans recognized was that data must be coupled with inclusive engagement. Unless you’re involving the community you seek to serve in the planning process and humanizing your census data, equitable outcomes will remain out of reach. 

Over the last two years, the Texas capital accelerated the buildout of its all ages and abilities bike network, building more than 100 new miles with no signs of slowing down.

In 2014, the City of Austin set an ambitious goal: Build a 400-mile bicycle network that winds throughout the city, connecting urban trails, quiet neighborhood streets and new protected bike lanes. A network that would offer residents a choice in how they get around, no matter the person’s age or ability. The envisioned All Ages and Abilities (AAA) Bicycle Network would be accompanied by major street crossing improvements and other infrastructure updates, eventually delivering more mobility options, relief from congestion, greater safety to all and a more livable community for Austin residents. 

Buoyed by funding made available through voter-approved mobility bonds, a robust and transparent community engagement process and the support of the city’s elected leadership, Austin’s Transportation Department (ATD) worked diligently to move the network beyond the pages of their plan and into reality. By 2017, however, fewer than 20 miles of the network had been constructed, and while the process and projects were significant achievements, the pace of development meant that the completed network might be decades away. 

In 2018, city leaders decided a change was needed to help Austin meet its mounting transportation needs and the urgency of climate change. A significant acceleration of its AAA bicycle network was determined to be the best course of action. MoveATX — a coalition of community leaders, advocates, activists and local organizations — was founded in order to support the city’s efforts, creating a potent partnership with ATD that has achieved far more together than either would have been able to accomplish alone.

MoveATX launched a media campaign that tapped into the city’s popular support for bicycling, emphasizing the use of out-of-home advertising to drive participation in the city’s public meetings and showcase how the proposed projects would result in reduced congestion, fewer crashes and a more equitable city. This partnership helped build support among residents and allowed ATD to accelerate its project delivery timeline by three times its previous pace.

Learn more about how Austin achieved this milestone by watching our Advocacy Academy video: 

Today, Austin has completed 215 miles of the AAA bike network, more than half of the network mileage envisioned in the original 2014 plan. It’s one of the few North American cities to reach such a milestone. Approximately 64% of Austin’s residents can now access and navigate the completely connected, comfortable system of bike lanes that allow people on two wheels to get to where they’re going safely, all without inconveniencing drivers and walkers.

Decisively, in November 2020, 67% of Austin voters approved Proposition B, a $460 million active transportation bond meant to expand walking and biking networks throughout the city.  With this funding secured, City of Austin officials expects that the entire AAA bicycle network will surpass more than 400 total miles — or 100% of the mileage envisioned in the 2014 plan — by 2025. Impressively, this investment exceeds the commitment recently made—and widely celebrated—by Paris, France ($291 million, with a 2026 completion date). Once complete, 83% of Austin’s residents will be able to easily walk, bike or scoot using the AAA network, connecting them to destinations throughout the city.

Reflecting on what this achievement means for Austin’s future, Mayor Steve Adler said, “Twenty years from now, I hope life on the street just looks active and involved, with lots of people doing many different things and the streets being used in a variety of ways. I want everyone in Austin to have the ability to be able to come together and to move with one another and talk to one another in an environment that is safe, friendly and accessible to everyone.”

Austin is setting a new precedent for American cities, showcasing that not only is a new era of mobility possible, but we don’t have to wait decades for it to become a reality. By building bike infrastructure into our transportation improvements, cities can ensure drivers, walkers and bikers can get where they need to go with the greatest safety and the least amount of hassle. 

We can have peace on the road — and more livable communities — when everyone has a piece of the road.

Austin Will Be America’s Next Great Biking City

An interview with Austin Mayor Steve Adler on the city’s ambitious, 400+ mile bike network.

In Austin, Texas, a more than 400-mile bike network is being built in record time. As of September of this year, 215 miles of the all ages and abilities network are complete, connecting protected bike lanes, neighborhood bikeways and urban trails. Impressively, Austin’s investment of $460 million to complete the network by 2025 exceeds the commitment recently made—and widely celebrated—by Paris, France ($291 million, with a 2026 completion date).

We spoke with Austin Mayor Steve Adler to discuss the ways the city rallied around the network’s construction, the major challenges to achieving comprehensive mode shift and how transit and bike projects benefit drivers, too.

PeopleForBikes: Why is this all-ages and abilities bike network important to the city of Austin?

Mayor Steve Adler: We have to do a better job of giving everyone in our city more equitable, safer and convenient transportation choices. People of all ages — whether they’re a child or in their eighties — and of all backgrounds have to feel comfortable and secure moving freely in Austin. People are not going to survive if it takes an hour and a half to commute to their medical office, to care for their kids or to get back and forth from their job. We also set climate goals in this city which we won’t reach unless we’re able to get people to make a mode shift.

For people who aren't from Austin, can you explain the two transportation bonds that passed and why they were such a big deal?

Two really important bond initiatives went before Austin voters last November, which, due to the pandemic, was an exciting time to take a bond initiative to voters. Many cities backed off of taking bonds to voters in that period of time for fear that people wouldn't tax themselves. Of our two bond proposals, one passed by 58% and the other by about two-thirds. The first one was really to bring mass public transit to our city in a way that people would actually use. 

We went to voters and said, “Let’s not focus on one transit line, let’s focus on the city and adopt a whole regional plan.” It required people to vote to increase their city property taxes by about 20.4%. But we were able to do that because people recognized that we needed to get this done. That was a $7.2 billion project and at the same time it was going to the voters, it was suggested that surely we could free up half a billion dollars to actually improve active transportation projects in our city, which would only complement and support the other proposition on the ballot.

We had the infrastructure in place. The elections were in place. The campaign and the messaging were supportive of one another. Advocates were supportive. We figured we should do them both while the time was ripe and fortunately, we were successful.

So this support from the public helped accelerate the buildout? 

We set what we thought were pretty ambitious goals and frankly, I would've been really proud if we had just met those original goals. But then we had a community that indicated that it was ready to open up the pocketbook and really develop these multimodal choices faster. At the same time as we were getting our community together to approve a multi-billion dollar urban rail system and transit overhaul, it became apparent to us that we could also accelerate the goal we had of building up the bicycle network. It was popular and people wanted us to do it.

How have different players in the city come together to make this happen?

It took a lot of grassroots work — a lot of the bicycle advocacy organizations in our city really helped position our community to be able to do this. We have some very strong bicycle advocacy organizations in this community — smart folks, strategic folks — that have always been pushing this agenda. But I think Austin really did come together on this and part of it is it fits with the culture of who we are in this city. Things happen fast when cities and communities are being their best selves, and this is just who we are.

How has the city built support for the network from residents that do not bike or will never choose to bike?

There are some people in our community that say that they're never going to give up their cars. And to those people, I say, "Great, but wouldn't you like all the other people in their cars to get off the roads so that you have more space? Let's give more options for the people that you'd like to see leave our roads.” That one's hard to argue with. 

The other thing we hear a lot is that's not going to happen in Texas. That it’s possible in a Scandinavian country, but not here. So we show people that in the early seventies, those countries were as car-centric as we are today. 

You also hear from people that no one will ever do this in Texas because it's just too hot and that the climate doesn't lend itself to it. And I say, “I hear you on climate, it can get a little warm here. Go ahead and get yourself an electric bike.” Then I show them a picture I took in Oslo, Norway, where it was below zero and the snow was coming down pretty heavy and people were dressed warmly and still using their bikes. When people are used to doing something because it’s easy, convenient and safe, they keep doing it, no matter the weather.

Austin is rare in that it’s coordinated between city transit organizations, advocates and the community. The city is promoting bikes, but in concert with transit and even drivers — why is that a winning strategy?

When you address the issues of transportation and mobility — and if you really are putting a certain effort into driving equity and opportunity — then you have to take a holistic approach. There is no one mobility solution that's the answer for everyone or in and of itself. It has to be an integrated system. You can pick pieces of that system but that’s going to leave people out. 

Our challenge is to have a comprehensive mode shift. The good thing about moving forward holistically is that the transit people are supporting the bike programs and vice versa because we’re all supporting the same concept. Seventy percent of the people that are traveling to Austin downtown right now are doing it alone in their cars. We can't survive that way on lots of different levels. The way we get from 70% to 50% by 2039 isn’t just bikes and it isn’t just transit. It isn’t just one thing — it’s everything. 

How do safe and equitable mobility options benefit Austin's larger goals?

There are so many things that are going right in Austin right now — it's kind of a magical place. It's the fastest-growing large metropolitan area in the country and has been for the last five years. We are just hitting on so many cylinders, but we’re not hitting on every cylinder for everybody. If we're going to be able to preserve the magic that is Austin — the kind of the culture that keeps things weird and supports innovation — we have to maintain diversity in our community. And that is the hardest thing to do when you become the “it” city because so many people want to come and everything becomes so expensive so fast. 

A mass public transit system and an all-ages and abilities bicycle network are both great for people's lives. These are all things that enable everyone to participate in a community, which is really important to our economy because our economy is all about the people. It will also help us to meet our goals around climate change. For Austin to get to a zero-carbon footprint by 2040, it's going to require us to take another look at how we're doing transportation, getting more and more people in fewer and fewer vehicles. This work fits in with that. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you see in Austin when it comes to large-scale, equitable mode shift?

There are challenges in any community, Austin included, when it comes to achieving real equity. To a large measure that's because so many of the systems and institutions are built around systemic challenges like racism. Those things are built-in. So if you actually want to change things, you have to be pretty disruptive. 

We're trying to do that in this city with homelessness and policing — disruptive change — to rethink how we do those kinds of systems. The same thing is true for transportation. And that's hard because people like to live with incremental change. I would say that the biggest challenge is recognizing that there's a lot of inertia working against you and that sometimes the needed change is going to have to be disruptive, and that can be tough for any community.

What’s your 10-year vision for Austin? Paint a picture of life and the city’s streets for us.

Twenty years from now, I hope life on the street just looks active and involved, with lots of people doing many different things and the streets being used in a variety of ways. I want everyone in Austin to have the ability to be able to come together and to move with one another and talk to one another in an environment that is safe, friendly and accessible to everyone. We have a lot of that already in our communities, we're just not using our streets in all the different ways that they could be used. That’s changing in many ways right now.

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.

Topics

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A Snapshot of Bicycling in 78 U.S. Cities

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