Prepared for some excellent news? America is turning into a greater place to trip your bike.
That’s one of many principal thrusts of PeopleForBike’s annual report on essentially the most bike-friendly cities in america. The 2024 rating of cities by “bikeability” once more offers Davis, Calif., and Minneapolis, the highest spots for medium and huge cities, respectively. However final yr’s winner within the small city class (Provincetown, Mass.) was edged out by the equally photogenic Mackinac Island, Mich.
In case you love your bike, you’ll take pleasure in perusing this checklist to see how your city stacks up. PeopleForBikes provides extra cities to its rankings yearly, with greater than 2,300 U.S. cities included this go-round. That’s a giant leap from the 1,484 cities rated for the Greatest Biking Cities of 2023.
However maybe most encouraging is solely watching the uptick of cities which have leveled up their biking infrastructure. In 2019, simply 33 cities obtained a rating of fifty or greater (on a scale of 0 to 100). This yr, the variety of cities in that class reached 183.
Greatest Biking Cities 2024: Prime Picks
In line with the nonprofit, a metropolis with a rating of at the least 50 is a good place to bike. The nonprofit’s researchers additionally take a look at six elements represented by the acronym SPRINT: secure speeds, protected bike lanes, reallocated house for biking and strolling, intersection therapies, community connections, and trusted knowledge.
Giant Cities (>300,000 Inhabitants)
- Minneapolis, Minnesota: 71
- Seattle, Washington: 65
- San Francisco, California: 64
- St. Paul, Minnesota: 61
- Portland, Oregon: 59
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 58
- New York Metropolis, New York: 56
- Arlington, Virginia: 53
- Washington, D.C.: 46
- Denver, Colorado: 46
Medium Cities (50,000-300,000 Inhabitants)
- Davis, California: 78
- Cambridge, Massachusetts: 72
- Berkeley, California: 71
- Boulder, Colorado: 70
- Corvallis, Oregon: 70
- Ankeny, Iowa: 70
- Ames, Iowa: 66
- Anchorage, Alaska: 64
- Hoboken, New Jersey: 62
- Grand Forks, North Dakota: 61
Small Cities (<50,000 Inhabitants)
- Mackinac Island, Michigan: 99
- Provincetown, Massachusetts: 96
- Harbor Springs, Michigan: 92
- Springdale, Utah: 89
- Washburn, Wisconsin: 89
- Fort Yates, North Dakota: 88
- Crested Butte, Colorado: 87
- Blue Diamond, Nevada: 85
- Murdock, Nebraska: 84
- Sewanee, Tennessee: 83
Biking Cities on the Rise
The researchers at PeopleForBikes don’t simply rank each metropolis in opposition to each other. In addition they observe cities dedicated to the lengthy course of of fixing their infrastructure to accommodate extra biking.
The nonprofit factors to a number of cities which have made notable efforts in the previous few years. That begins with Madison, Wisc., the place metropolis officers have invested in connecting town’s bike community to make road hazards like underpasses safer.
Different examples embrace:
- Ames, Iowa: The town’s Capital Enhancements Plan features a whopping 10% of the full price range earmarked for brand spanking new bike amenities annually.
- Austin, Texas: Voters authorized $460 million in 2020 for transportation infrastructure. With assist from PeopleForBikes’ Closing Mile program, Austin constructed 115 miles of latest bikeways in simply 2 years.
- Cambridge, Mass.: In 2020, town set a timeline to finish 25 miles of routes by 2026. In 2019, Cambridge handed a Biking Security Ordinance, the primary regulation within the nation to mandate the creation of secure biking routes.
- Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah: Along with constructing new strolling and biking trails, town council additionally authorized an ordinance decreasing native velocity limits from 25 to twenty mph, due to the efforts of Candy Streets, a neighborhood advocacy group that created the “20 Is Loads” marketing campaign.
“By documenting annual enhancements within the high quality of cities’ low-stress bike networks via Metropolis Rankings, we assist resolution makers prioritize vital tasks like protected bike lanes and shared use paths and the insurance policies behind them,” mentioned Martina Haggerty, senior director of native innovation at PeopleForBikes.
