Dive Brief:
- The 10 largest cities and boroughs in the U.S. all provided sustained actions to improve bicycling since last year, according to PeopleForBike’s 2025 city ratings, released today.
- Among cities with populations over 300,000, Baltimore, Cleveland and Fresno, California, showed the greatest score increases from 2024 to 2025 on a zero-to-100 scale. The top 10 largest cities scored above 50, which PeopleForBikes considers a critical tipping point in building momentum toward better bicycling in metropolitan areas, the organization said in a news release.
- “The places that are seeing the most correlation between projects getting built and score increases over time are the ones that are doing it in a planned, methodical way,” Martina Haggerty, vice president of infrastructure at PeopleForBikes, said in an interview.
Dive Insight:
Bicyclist fatalities in traffic collisions increased every year from 2017 to 2023, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. In 2023, the latest year for which complete data is available, 1,166 bike riders lost their lives on streets and roads.
Haggerty explained that connected bicycle-friendly infrastructure — such as protected bike lanes and dedicated bikeways — improves safety for cyclists and other road users. These routes are best when they also connect to neighborhoods, stores and other transit modes, she said.
“There are some cities that are building a lot of bike infrastructure, but they're not doing it with that lens,” Haggerty said. She pointed out Chicago, which got an 11 score in the new rating, as such a city.
Washington, D.C., represents the opposite end of the spectrum. Its score grew from 36 in 2018 to 52 this year. “That's due to filling in key connectivity gaps that puts that bike network together,” said Grace Stonecipher, PeopleForBikes Infrastructure Analytics and Research Manager. In general, the Northeast U.S. “ranks pretty highly,” Stonecipher said.
The first and only city with a 100 score was Mackinac Island in Michigan. The car-free island, with a population of 583, sits at the top of Lake Huron.
For its eighth year of city ratings, PeopleForBikes evaluated over 2,900 global cities. Paris and Delft, Netherlands, ranked among the highest-ranged worldwide cities. “In general, Europe averages quite a bit higher overall in their city rankings,” Stonecipher said. These cities often have slower speed limits, smaller vehicles and a longstanding culture of bike-riding, she added.
Although U.S. cities have been making progress to increase safety for bike riders, “we're definitely concerned about the future of funding for bike infrastructure at the federal level,” Haggerty said.
In March, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rescinded Biden-era policies to include environmental and social considerations in federally funded infrastructure projects. Among these were directives to promote and improve safety for all road users and make streets and other transportation facilities compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
PeopleForBikes is working with other organizations, the bicycle industry and elected officials to continue support for bike-friendly funding, Haggerty said. She pointed to local and state support for such projects. Voters approved $2.2 billion in new funding through ballot measures in 2023, according to the organization. “Improving safety on roads all throughout America,” Haggerty said, “is really not a partisan issue.”
