Greatest Biking Cities 2024: PeopleForBikes Weighs In

Prepared for some excellent news? America is changing into a greater place to journey your bike.

That’s one of many foremost thrusts of PeopleForBike’s annual report on probably the most bike-friendly cities in the USA. 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 12 months’s winner within the small city class (Provincetown, Mass.) was edged out by the equally photogenic Mackinac Island, Mich.

In the event you love your bike, you’ll take pleasure in perusing this listing 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 an enormous 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 acquired a rating of fifty or greater (on a scale of 0 to 100). This 12 months, 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 superb place to bike. The nonprofit’s researchers additionally have a look at six elements represented by the acronym SPRINT: protected speeds, protected bike lanes, reallocated area for biking and strolling, intersection therapies, community connections, and trusted information.

Giant Cities (>300,000 Inhabitants)

1. Minneapolis, Minnesota: 71
2. Seattle, Washington: 65
3. San Francisco, California: 64
4. St. Paul, Minnesota: 61
5. Portland, Oregon: 59
6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 58
7. New York Metropolis, New York: 56
8. Arlington, Virginia: 53
9. Washington, D.C.: 46
10. Denver, Colorado: 46

Medium Cities (50,000-300,000 Inhabitants)

1. Davis, California: 78
2. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 72
3. Berkeley, California: 71
4. Boulder, Colorado: 70
5. Corvallis, Oregon: 70
6. Ankeny, Iowa: 70
7. Ames, Iowa: 66
8. Anchorage, Alaska: 64
9. Hoboken, New Jersey: 62
10. Grand Forks, North Dakota: 61

Small Cities (<50,000 Inhabitants)

1. Mackinac Island, Michigan: 99
2. Provincetown, Massachusetts: 96
3. Harbor Springs, Michigan: 92
4. Springdale, Utah: 89
5. Washburn, Wisconsin: 89
6. Fort Yates, North Dakota: 88
7. Crested Butte, Colorado: 87
8. Blue Diamond, Nevada: 85
9. Murdock, Nebraska: 84
10. Sewanee, Tennessee: 83

Biking Cities on the Rise

The researchers at PeopleForBikes don’t simply rank each metropolis towards each other. Additionally they observe cities dedicated to the lengthy course of of adjusting their infrastructure to accommodate extra biking.

The nonprofit factors to a number of cities which have made notable efforts in the previous couple of 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 entire price range earmarked for brand spanking new bike amenities annually.
• Austin, Texas: Voters permitted $460 million in 2020 for transportation infrastructure. With assist from PeopleForBikes’ Remaining 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 legislation within the nation to mandate the creation of protected biking routes.
• Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah: Along with constructing new strolling and biking trails, town council additionally permitted an ordinance decreasing native pace limits from 25 to twenty mph, because of the efforts of Candy Streets, an area advocacy group that created the “20 Is A lot” marketing campaign.

“By documenting annual enhancements within the high quality of cities’ low-stress bike networks via Metropolis Scores, we assist resolution makers prioritize crucial 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.