We’re making biking better in Montana through funding local bike projects, supporting pro-bike policies and legislation at the local and state levels and highlighting great hometown routes on Ride Spot. In spring 2018, our Community Grant Program helped fund the creation of a balance bike park in Trails End Park in Billings.

2020 has been a momentous year for bikes, especially in local and state ballot measures.

Thanks to the collaborative effort of millions of voters nationwide, a total of $1 billion was secured for bike projects across the U.S. such as bike lanes, trail maintenance and electric bicycle share programs. 

Check out some of the exciting measures that passed this year:

Denver, CO: Denver voters approved a Climate Sales Tax to fund programs that support affordable, clean, safe and reliable transportation choices such as bike riding and neighborhood-scale transit. The tax will also fund neighborhood-based environmental and climate justice programs that directly benefit communities of color.

Austin, TX: Austin voters approved both Prop A and Prop B — measures that will improve the city’s transportation systems and infrastructure for bike riding by installing an all-electric bike fleet stationed at transit hubs and building a high-capacity public transportation network that consists of sidewalks, bike lanes, urban trails and safety improvements. (Check out our blog for more about this tremendous accomplishment.)

Montana: Montana voters approved a marijuana tax that will place a 20% tax on recreational marijuana, 9.5% of which will go toward land, water and wildlife conservation programs (including funding for trails), veteran services, substance misuse treatment and health care.

PeopleForBikes’ VoteForBikes campaign tracks local and state ballot initiatives that can improve bike riding for all. We highlight these measures to make it easier for you to understand what is on the ballot in your community. Know of a bike-friendly initiative that you want to see on the ballot in 2021?

Let us know by emailing PeopleForBikes’ Regulatory and Policy Analyst Ashley Seaward at ashley@peopleforbikes.org.

Due to the constantly changing dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis, we encourage you to follow all current CDC guidelines as well as local travel advisories and recommendations. Take care of yourselves and loved ones. We’re all in this together.

The results are in — how did your city rank?

PeopleForBikes is proud to announce the third annual PlacesForBikes City Ratings — a data-driven analysis evaluating and identifying the best U.S. cities for bicycling. This campaign not only helps showcase the cities leading the nation in making biking better for everyone, but also provides key insights on how other cities can work to do the same.

“Our City Ratings create a holistic picture of bicycling in cities based on measurable factors,” says Rebecca Davies, PeopleForBikes’ network + mapping specialist. “Top scorers are cities of all types and geographies who have succeeded in different ways, including cities with strong historical investments in active transportation as well as cities pursuing ambitious plans to rapidly implement high-quality bicycle networks.”

Overall City Ratings are shaped by five key indicators: Ridership (how many people are riding bikes?), Safety (how safe is it to ride bikes?), Network (how easy is it for people to bike where they want to go?), Reach (how well does the network serve all members of the community?) and Acceleration (how fast is the bike network growing and/or improving?). These indicators are ranked on a scale of 1-5 and weighed equally to provide a city’s comprehensive City Ratings score.

We rated 567 cities in 2020. Top overall performers were boosted by high Network and Acceleration scores. Here’s how they ranked:


The 2020 PlacesForBikes City Ratings Top Five:


What makes these cities so great for biking?

Since its early days as a California Mission town, San Luis Obispo (or SLO, for short) has worked hard to preserve a compact urban core with a greenbelt surrounding the city. “We’ve striven to avoid sprawl, foster a vibrant downtown and make sure that housing, jobs, schools, recreation and shopping are not too far apart from each other,” says Adam Fukushima, SLO’s active transportation manager. The first in his role, Fukushima works solely on bicycle and pedestrian improvements in the city. 

Since 2014, San Luis Obispo has had a policy in place to spend at least 20% of its transportation expenditures on bicycle improvements. One priority project has been the development of a backbone city bike path, reaching from north to south to connect the local university (California Polytechnic State University) with downtown and residential neighborhoods.

Cal Poly doesn’t allow first and second year students to have cars on campus. This rule, plus the city’s proximity to parks and open space, helps the city get more people on bikes, says Fukushima. “In contrast to many communities where you have to put your bike in the car to drive to a trail, we have many fabulous mountain biking trails and paths close to housing. This has been the jumping off point for many people to not only use a bike for recreation, but try it out for commuting as well.”

In Madison, the scenic bike route is often the fastest route. With a downtown located on a narrow isthmus between two lakes, getting where you need to go on time and enjoying the beauty of your ride aren’t mutually exclusive. Several shared-use paths provide easy access throughout the city and the 936-acre University of Wisconsin campus.

“What really makes Madison a great place to ride is that there are lots of other people out riding all year round,” says Madison’s Pedestrian Bicycle Administrator Renee Callaway. “Commuters, recreational riders, errand runners, family bikers — you’re never alone when you get out on your bike.”

To continue making biking easier and safer, Madison invests in bike underpasses, rail-trail conversions and long-distance trail connections. As a city that sees nearly four feet of snow every winter, Madison is also heavily invested in year-round maintenance of their bike network and has designated primary routes across town that are cleared and ready-to-ride by 7 a.m. Monday-Friday. 

“Bicycling is in our DNA,” says Rob Dayton, Santa Barbara’s transportation planning and parking manager. “Before automobiles were around, it was the bicycle clubs that lobbied to pave streets for bicycling.” Santa Barbara even had the first multimodal transportation in California — a mule-drawn trolley car that included a bike rack on the back for turn-of-the-century cyclists to hang their big-wheel Penny Farthing bikes. 

As early as the 1960s, the city recognized how heavy vehicle congestion and traffic plagued their southern coastal neighbor Los Angeles. This prompted Santa Barbara to take action to embrace the bicycle. More recently, some two lane roads in town were reduced to one lane for vehicle traffic, with the other dedicated to bike travel. Road repaving projects that included the addition of a bike lane quickly helped the size of Santa Barbara’s bike network skyrocket. The addition of bike racks throughout the downtown also helped boost the embrace of bicycles. “No matter where you want to go, if you ride a bike, you have a front row parking spot,” says Dayton. The implementation of bicycle boulevards, streets with low motorized traffic volumes and speeds, designated and designed to give bicycle travel priority, have also been a key part of Santa Barbara’s embrace of bicycling.

Thanks to the growth of California’s Active Transportation Planning grants program, Santa Barbara has invested $40 million in bike improvements across the city over the last five years, with many new projects, including a city-wide electric bike share program, on the horizon. “I think Santa Barbara really has something to offer everyone,” says Sam Furtner, the city’s mobility coordinator. “Whether you’re learning to ride a bike or looking for world-class road rides overlooking the ocean, we’ve got you covered.”

The relatively dense and compact nature of our nation’s capital makes biking one of the most convenient ways to traverse the city. 90 miles of bike lanes connect to 60 miles of trails, with D.C. serving as the regional hub of a 500-plus mile trail network that connects residents to jobs, neighborhoods and parks in the District, Maryland and Virginia. The city was an early adopter of protected bike lanes: 12 miles have been built since 2010 and a campaign continues to add 20 miles by the end of this year. The 5,000-bike strong regional bike share program Capital Bikeshare with more than 600 stations also allows D.C. residents to easily transition between biking, walking and transit.

When it comes to improving safety for cyclists, Washington D.C. recognized that education is key. “All D.C. Public School second graders are required to complete a fun, interactive course about how to safely ride a bike, including a supervised ride around their local neighborhood,” says Mariam Nabizad, public affairs specialist for the District’s Department of Transportation (DDOT). “In addition, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association educates kids and adults of every ability level in courses like Summer Bike Camp, Learn to Ride and Confident City Cycling.”

In 1976, a group of University of Montana students organized a ride across the U.S. to celebrate the bicentennial. They were eventually joined by more than  4,000 people in what became the first transAmerica group ride. After the ride, several organizers stayed in town and continued to promote bicycle travel, launching the national non-profit Bikecentennial (now Adventure Cycling). Missoula has had a soft spot for biking ever since. 

“Missoula’s successes would not be possible without a comprehensive understanding of the benefits of biking that has been reached through decades of work, slowly creating the culture,” says Ben Weiss, the city’s bicycle/pedestrian program manager, referencing the groundbreaking efforts of his predecessors. “Over this time, we’ve worked hard to build the appropriate facilities to make biking safe, comfortable and convenient for people of all ages and abilities.”

Despite not having the budget of larger cities, Missoula constructed one of the first modern protected bike lanes through their downtown over a decade ago, and continues to build and connect their network of bike trails. The backbone of the city’s bike network is their commuter trail system, which traverses town east to west, easily connecting residents to work, school and play. Recent successes include the connection of a six-block gap in one of their main bike routes, the Bitterroot Trail, which included the implementation of the state of Montana’s first designated bike traffic signal. Missoula recently adopted the city’s first Bicycle Facilities Master Plan, which includes a comprehensive vision of a connected bike network accessible by riders of all ages and abilities.

2020 City Ratings: Top 5 U.S. Cities for Bikes

“It is super simple to jump on your bike and literally ride six blocks to downtown,” says Tom Johnson, Shop Manager at Owenhouse Cycling in Bozeman, Montana. He credits a strong downtown, a small urban grid, low traffic volumes, friendly people, and the Gallagator Linear Trail with Bozeman’s easy riding. The shop caters to technical mountain bikers that come for the region’s rugged single-track, but hybrid and commuter sales—including e-bikes in the last year—are brisk, and Johnson attributes that to the town’s bikeability.

Until recently, there wasn’t an easy way to show a direct relationship between good biking conditions and strong independent bike shop (IBD) sales. The launch of PlacesForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) changes all that. From work to school to market to park, the BNA maps and rates the connectivity of low-stress bicycling routes, scoring towns and cities on how well their networks take people to life’s everyday destinations.

“It’s really the first time we’ve been able to measure the quality of bike networks in a way that is consistent and comparable across the country. So it’s a unique opportunity to see if cities with better bike networks have better bike business,” says PeopleForBikes Research Director Jennifer Boldry. “It was really a quick jump from having the BNA finished and looking at whether there was a correlation between BNA scores and IBD sales in cities.”

And there is. Correlating BNA scores with independent bike shop sales data showed that places with the most comfortable and connected bike networks—those with the highest BNA scores—tend to also be places with the highest average bike shop sales.

Similar to Bozeman, in San Francisco the BNA score is high and sales are strong. Avenue Cyclery general manager Brian Benson says he sees regular proof that the city’s network contributes to the shop’s strong sales. Benson says that experienced cyclists often introduce friends and partners to the city’s bike network, and bring them into the shop. ”They’ll say, ‘Now I know there is a safe route for me to get to work or ride to the beach.'” Benson credits his shop’s emphasis on service and community involvement through advocacy for a lot of its success, but says the network plays a big role. “If it wasn’t for the infrastructure that San Francisco has, there is no way there would be as many bike shops as there are in this city. It’s what allows us to easily work with individuals who are stepping in the door of a bike shop for the first time.”

There is no question in Tom Johnson’s mind that high-quality everyday biking networks are part of the future for bike shops. “As trails expand and roadways start to [include] bike lanes, people will realize that it can be easy to bike,” he says.”I think the infrastructure is going to drive the bike sales more than the bike sales will drive the infrastructure.”

Boldry cautions that the correlation of high BNA scores with sales doesn’t mean there is a cause and effect relationship between better bike networks and bike shop sales. Higher average incomes or stronger political support could be the reason that both are higher in some cities. The current analysis combines BNA scores and retail sales for 300 cities in the U.S., so not all cities are included in the analysis—yet.

An updated and expanded BNA is slated for release this April. Boldry believes that as the BNA is refined and collects more and better data about cities and towns, these conclusions will point definitively to the link between network quality and sales. Boldry points to more conclusive research showing the economic impact of mountain biking trails, and suspects the same fundamental pattern is happening with urban bike networks.

Back in Bozeman, Johnson believes that better bike routes connect directly to the bottom line. “The more systems you have built to make it easier to bike, it’s just going to feed that,” he says. “If a person has a great experience then their friends will buy a bike. Then they’ll buy a better bike. Then they’ll buy maybe two bikes. Then they need more service. So everything ripples back into the shop.”

How Better Biking Conditions Can Help Bike Shops

The bipartisan Recreation Not Red-Tape (RNR) Act was introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate in late July by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). It provides a plan for improving and enhancing recreation opportunities on public lands by creating a unified system of National Recreation Areas to promote and manage activities such as hiking, biking and horseback riding. PeopleForBikes supports the RNR Act because it will help create seamless networks for bike recreation and tourism.

The current approach to managing public lands involves many different agencies, each with its own perspective on recreation. From the Bureau of Land Management to the National Park Service, there is no consistency. By developing new trans-boundary National Recreation Areas, this legislation would help protect appropriate recreational opportunities on public lands.

The RNR bill also streamlines the permitting process for federal and state land. Frequently, bicycle tours and tourists pass from one federal agency’s jurisdiction to another, or from state land to federal land. Currently, each jurisdiction requires its own permit and has its own process. Instead of this outdated system, the RNR Act will ensure that all passes or permits required for outfitters and guides will be available online. Additionally, federal land management agencies will be encouraged to work with states to allow visitors to buy a state and federal pass at one location and in one transaction. As part of the legislation, land management agencies (such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Forest Service) will adopt a consistent recreation permitting process—this will make it easier for people to ride bikes on public lands.

Addressing the maintenance backlog on federal lands is critical to preserving these great places for bikes long term. By developing Volunteer Enhancement Initiatives this legislation will promote greater volunteerism in the maintenance of public lands.

PeopleForBikes is actively monitoring this bill and on October 3 we submitted testimony during a bill hearing held by the House Natural Resources Committee. We will keep our members updated on the status of the Recreation Not Red-Tape Act.

Recreation Not Red-Tape Act and What It Means for bikes

On Aug. 29, Department of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt ordered the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service (NPS) to establish interim policies within 30 days that guide the use of e-bikes on public lands. The departments were encouraged to adopt a policy that allows e-bikes to be ridden where traditional bicycles are allowed. You can learn more about the Secretarial Order.

The NPS announced its new e-bike policy on Aug. 30, stating that e-bikes may be used in the same manner as traditional bicycles, allowing them on park roads, paved or hardened trails, areas designated for off-road motor vehicle use and administrative roads where traditional bikes are allowed. E-bikes are not allowed in wilderness areas and individuals may not operate an e-bike where the motor can be used to propel the rider without pedaling, except in locations that are open to motor vehicle traffic.

NPS Superintendents had 30 days following the agency’s announcement to either amend their Compendium to include an e-bike policy that considers the safety, resource protection and local requirements of their community, or to adopt the e-bike policy as stated in the National Park Service’s announcement.

PeopleForBikes maintains a spreadsheet of the National Parks, Monuments, Seashores and Recreational Areas that have either updated their Superintendent’s Compendium to reflect the Secretarial Order or created a new e-bike policy based on local community needs of their land. We will keep this updated with information as we receive it and hope it is a useful resource.

These policy announcements are a watershed moment for e-bikes riders. Next time you plan a trip to the outdoors with your e-bike, check out the many new incredible rides available in national parks. Happy trails!

The White Rim Road, Canyonlands National Park

Going-to-the-sun Road, Glacier National Park

Stone Cliff Road, New River Gorge National River

Lake Village Trail, Yellowstone National Park

Locations

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Logan Pass

Distance: 67 miles

Billings Sunday Loop

Distance: 8.6 Miles

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News

Bikes Won Big at the Ballot Box

2020 City Ratings: Top 5 U.S. Cities for Bikes

How Better Biking Conditions Can Help Bike Shops

Recreation Not Red-Tape Act and What It Means for bikes

E-bike Access in National Parks