Over at Bicycling.com, they’ve put together a comprehensive list of the top 50 bike-friendly cities in the country. While it’s not entirely clear whether the cities are simply listed, or ranked (and if so, how), the list offers a comprehensive look at the measures U.S. cities have been taking to advocate and support biking, from installing bike racks to building 100-mile bike loops around the city. The range of locations on the list is also interesting — it covers all the major urban centers like Seattle and New York, as well as smaller areas like Billings, MT and Cary, NC. There’s also an interesting cross section of suburbs, like Arlington, VA, which is in a region notorious for its increasing gridlock.
One interesting question would be which, if any of these biking initiatives have had an effect on auto traffic. Perhaps a topic for a future infographic. [SButtonZ button="digg"]
Image: Bicycling.com
Tags: Abandon Those Cars, biking
Not surprising of course is the utter lack of pretty much any cities in the Deep South, other than Charleston.
Its not a comprehensive list at all. In fact, the authors specifically mention that they cherry pick cities in order to get a better geographic spread. Also, San Francisco gets a mention of how you can take your bike on a bus across the bay bridge. How is that bike friendly? Almost every east coast city has buses with bike racks and some of those bus routes also cross water.
This list seems to basically correspond with the nation’s largest cities. The only ones conspicuously missing are Los Angeles (though Long Beach kinda counts), Houston, Dallas, Atlanta and Detroit.
@Vin, I’d say that about half the cities are the largest. Cary, NC is definitely not one of the nation’s largest cities, nor is Eugene.
Wow, I live in Baltimore, and if it’s on the list they really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to hit 50. There is a bit of a cycling community forming here, but narrow streets, virtually no infrastructure, and clueless, hostile drivers make this place way too scary for me to ride in. Nice of them to mention our famously bike-promoting mayor Shiela Dixon, except that she had to quit in February after pleading guilty to embezzlement.
The top 10 are listed here – they certainly all arent in the top 50 by size (Madison, Eugene, Boulder…)
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/04/minneapolis_nam.php
At the top, click on the right-hand arrow and it will show the rankings one by one.
This map loses.
This list should really be named “50 Cities that tend to be more Bike Friendly than most.”
The DC area keeps getting more and more bike friendly. I hope one day Fairfax will make the list
@vin
I commute 15mi daily in Atlanta, and there is absolutely no way it should be on that list.
Billings, MT is less bike-friendly than Missoula. Makes me want to look at the methodology
Kudos for including Anchorage on that list! I’d also suggest mentioning Fairbanks as well, given that there’s a fantastic network of paved bike paths throughout the city that will get you wherever you need to go. Most of the roads are also perfectly bike-friendly.
Yes, Stephen, but Atlanta is perhaps evolving faster. We’ll pick up more steam with our new Mayor and City Council president. Atlanta Streets Alive and the BeltLine are examples of the increasing momentum.
They should have stuck with the top 10 or 15.
Everything past that is garbage. “This city at one point promised that it was considering maybe installing a bike lane.” Imagine if they had tried the top 100. “This city doesn’t ban biking”
Yeesh. Not that we Rapidians expect folks to know much about us, but that pin’s something like 90 miles off (draw a line east from Milwaukee; we’re just south of that line and 30 miles inland). What is that, Pentwater?
On topic, as a biker and commuter in GR, I can say that biking as an alternative mode of transport has become very popular in central city areas, but we have a long way to go in making other parts of town (suburbs, etc.) car-optional let alone welcoming to bicycle traffic. As such I wouldn’t say it’s impacted traffic that much around most of town, but maybe just maybe in the “hipper” areas.
I checked the “under 100,000″ list and was not surprised to see Davis CA (known as the Family Town for obvious reasons) at No. 1. They even have special traffic lights for bikes. I wonder what percentage of cities with “high marks” for bicycle friendliness and usage are college/university towns.
Interesting, this map seems to place Grand Rapids, Michigan–which I might add is not very bike friendly–some 100 miles North and a good deal West of its real location.
It is an odd list, and there is this telling note at the end of Bicycling’s description of the list/map “(Note: We considered only cities with populations of 100,000 or more, and we strove for geographical diversity to avoid having a list dominated by California’s many bike-oriented cities.)” So, hard to say the extent to which the list is about satisfying their broad readership and how much it is really about highlighting the cities that are doing their best to support bicycling.
@ Shevonne: Compared to Loudoun, Fairfax is already a cyclist’s dream. You have a bicycle coordinator in the county gov (or maybe that just got cut?), marked bike lanes, bike paths that actually take you places, and a bike map that shows you how to get there. We’ve got none of that. At least Fairfax is making an effort. Loudoun has yet to implement a 10-15 year-old biking/pedestrian plan.
@Free Refills – but that’s nothing compared to Alaska’a new status as an island off the coast of Arizona.
St Louis “bike friendly”? Side splitting hilarious but I guess supporting a pro race for a week pays large promotional dividends.
complete article here:
http://staging4.texterity.com/bicycling/201005?folio=54#pg58
I really have no understanding of the ranking if Philadelphia and Boston are basically tied. I’ve lived in both cities, and Philadelphia is far more bike friendly. It has over ten times the bike lane mileage of Boston (200 vs. 15 miles) along with much more temperate winters (this year being the unusual exception). People in Boston always thought it was strange that I would bike on weekend nights while no one in Philly bats an eye. Keep in mind that, unlike Philly, ALL Boston public transportation shuts down at 1:00AM, including buses, an hour before last call.
Miami? LOL.
No Detroit love huh? I suppose this is a list of cities that try to make their terrifying cycling conditions less bad. Detroit doesn’t need to. Ample smooth pavement, no traffic, totally flat, rarely rainy and loads of fellow riders… what more do you need?
I bike in Washington DC every week and can’t imagine how anyone could possibly call it bike friendly. I wonder what bogus assumptions this list is based on. One problem could be that it only looks at American cities; I’ve never visited any American city that was remotely as bike friendly as your average city in northern Europe.
The 50 Most Bike-Friendly Cities in the U.S. » INFRASTRUCTURIST…
The 50 Most Bike-Friendly Cities in the U.S. » INFRASTRUCTURIST…