By Lars Hundley
PeopleForBikes, a national bicycling advocacy nonprofit and bicycle industry trade association, has released its 2024 City Ratings, evaluating more than 2,500 cities worldwide for the quality of their bike networks. The annual data-driven program assigns each city a score from 0 to 100 based on factors such as safe speeds, protected bike lanes, and network connections.
This year’s ratings include 2,300 U.S. cities, an increase of 816 from 2023. For the first time, 89 cities from the United Kingdom and 44 from Australia were included, along with 46 additional European cities.
The top-scoring U.S. cities for 2024 are:
Small Cities (under 50,000 population):
- 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
Medium Cities (50,000-300,000 population):
- 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
Large Cities (over 300,000 population):
- Minneapolis, Minnesota: 71
- Seattle, Washington: 65
- San Francisco, California: 64
- St. Paul, Minnesota: 61
- Portland, Oregon: 59
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 58
- New York City, New York: 56
- Arlington, Virginia: 53
- Washington, D.C.: 46
- Denver, Colorado: 46
Rebecca Davies, City Ratings program director, said, “While hundreds of U.S. cities are committed to improving the efficiency and safety of their transportation systems through policy statements and plans, City Ratings leaders are those that follow through on those aspirations by redesigning their streets to make bicycling safer and more accessible to people of all ages and abilities.”
Since 2019, the number of U.S. cities scoring 50 or higher has increased from 33 to 183, indicating progress in bike infrastructure development. Notable improvements include Salt Lake City (from 46 in 2020 to 52 in 2024), Ames, Iowa (40 to 66), and Cambridge, Massachusetts (36 to 72).
The City Ratings work in conjunction with PeopleForBikes’ Great Bike Infrastructure Project, which tracks over 1,400 bicycle infrastructure projects across the U.S. Martina Haggerty, senior director of local innovation at PeopleForBikes, said, “By documenting annual improvements in the quality of cities’ low-stress bike networks through City Ratings, we help decision makers prioritize critical projects like protected bike lanes and shared use paths and the policies behind them.”
Crested Butte gets an 87. That’s very interesting. town is rather small and easy to walk. I’ve stayed in CB four or five times and walked when going somewhere in town. The greater CB area is a different story. The altitude is high which can be make cycling difficult for visitors. There’s a nice bikepath up to Mt. Crested Butte, but it’s kinda steep so it’s best to take the bus up and ride down.
IMO there is a small area that’s bike friendly, but the greater area is less so.
It’s concerning that Fort Collins, Colorado isn’t included in the list of medium cities. This raises questions about the accuracy and quality of the study.