Biking has long been a core part of the culture in Mill Valley, California. Mount Tamalpais, or Mount Tam to locals, sits just north of the city and is best known as the birthplace of mountain biking. In addition to this extensive network of trails, residents of Mill Valley are now seeing more opportunities for biking even closer to home.

A Holistic Approach to Solving Transportation Problems

Located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, the roads of Mill Valley were originally laid out to serve a more rural population. As the population grew, the city’s geography limited opportunities for major infrastructural changes — there simply wasn’t room to add more car lanes. With traffic increasingly impacting daily life, Mill Valley needed to find a better solution to move people safely and efficiently to the places they wanted to go.

The city council recognized the opportunity for a transportation modeshift, and also the need to approach the issue of traffic more holistically. In 2023, Mill Valley created the Transportation Mobility Advisory Committee (TMAC), which addresses the four major modes of transportation: cars, buses, bikes, and walking.

Building a More Bikeable City: Applying the SPRINT Principles

Summarized by the acronym SPRINT, PeopleForBikes identified six principles that can help cities of all sizes become great places to ride:

Mill Valley has already applied a number of these principles in their work to improve biking locally, best exemplified by the Miller Avenue project. Miller Avenue is essentially one of the  main streets in and out of Mill Valley, and the city completed a major overhaul of the road in 2018 with continued improvements in the years since.

Safe Speeds: Mill Valley lowered the speed limit on Miller Avenue from 30 mph down to 25 mph, aligning with NACTO guidelines. The city has also been proactive about lowering speed limits on other key streets, especially near schools.

Protected Lanes: A buffered bike lane was added in each direction along Miller Avenue.

Reallocating Space: Miller Avenue was narrowed down to one lane in certain parts to allow for the construction of the buffered bike lane. In another part of town, an agreement was made to construct a multi-use path through the middle of a golf course, improving connectivity between the neighborhood and downtown.

Intersection Treatments: The city is working on a safety corridor study on Miller Avenue, which includes looking at how to improve the safety of two major intersections for bikes, pedestrians, and cars.

Network Connectivity: Mill Valley is currently updating its bike/pedestrian plan and connectivity will be a big focus in prioritizing future projects which will be reviewed annually. The city also puts a lot of emphasis on connecting to surrounding towns, collaborating on mutli-use paths that provide additional opportunities for getting around by bike.

Trusted Data: A representative from Mill Valley attended PeopleForBikes’ mapathons and updated their OpenStreetMap data to better reflect Mill Valley’s infrastructure, leading to a more accurate City Ratings score.

Bike and pedestrian infrastructure has long been a key part of Mill Valley’s city planning strategy. Equally important is the support of residents for safer places to walk and bike. With the construction of new bike lanes, the culture around bikes as transportation has started to shift.

“The thing about humans is we like to do what other people are doing. If you are stuck in traffic and you're looking at people on their bikes riding by, you go, ‘You know what? There's probably a better way of doing this. Maybe I should [ride] too.’,” says Urban Carmel, Mill Valley city councilmember and former mayor. “The Miller Avenue bike lane is really important because it's a billboard for what we're trying to create.”

By building infrastructure that provides a comfortable, safe, connected alternative to driving, Mill Valley is proactively supporting a modeshift and creating a culture of biking throughout the city. With the rising popularity of e-bikes and cargo bikes, this culture is expanding to a much broader array of people.

“Advocacy looks different now because it covers so many segments of our population,” says Kat Jones, another city councilmember. “It's a lot easier to gain support for bike infrastructure from this broad swath of the population. It just has a different face than it did before. A nice bike lane has really changed a lot of lives.”

Bill Hoppin, chair of TMAC, describes Mill Valley as a city where residents have pride in their town and want to see it continue to improve and be best-in-class as a place to live and raise a family. They also growingly see a clear 1:1 relationship for traffic reduction that results when one trip by car is replaced by a bike. This is why Hoppin selected PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings program, because it’s a clear, data-driven way to measure annual progress and maintain momentum.

“We want to do really well on this, and we think that PeopleForBikes can help us fundamentally create a better, safer, more sustainable city — a city that lives up to the values it proclaims,” says Hoppin. “It's not going to happen overnight, so having an annual ranking that can show incremental improvement and progress is critical and we are excited for what comes next.”

Stay tuned for the release of PeopleForBikes’ 2026 City Ratings in June, highlighting communities like Mill Valley that are building connected, low-stress networks. This year, new census data, refined bike network analyses, and updated design standards are reshaping how cities are scored. Learn more here.

Building a Culture of Biking in Mill Valley, California

When New York City installed protected bike lanes on 9th Avenue, something remarkable happened: injuries for all street users fell by 58%. Across NYC corridors with protected bike lanes, pedestrian injury rates have dropped by 12 to 52% depending on the corridor. These infrastructure improvements aren't just making streets safer for cyclists — they're protecting everyone who uses our roads.

Protected bike lanes do more than separate cyclists from cars. They fundamentally reshape how streets function, creating multiple safety benefits for pedestrians as well as people riding bikes. By placing a physical barrier between the bike lane and vehicle traffic, these designs shorten crossing distances at intersections. That means instead of navigating across multiple lanes of mixed traffic, pedestrians cross distinct, predictable zones.

The safety improvements are dramatic. Streets with protected bike lanes in New York City typically see injury crashes drop by 40% for all road users — drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike. Some locations have recorded reductions exceeding 50%. A comprehensive study across 12 large U.S. cities found that streets with protected bike lanes had 44% fewer deaths and 50% fewer serious injuries compared to average American streets.

These lanes also reduce turning conflicts at intersections. When cyclists have their own protected space, drivers making turns have clearer sightlines and fewer potential collision points. The result is less traffic weaving, fewer sudden movements, and more predictable street behavior — all factors that directly benefit pedestrian safety.

Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco demonstrate what's possible when cities commit to protected infrastructure. Portland's fatality rate dropped 75% between 1990 and 2010 as the city built out its protected bike network. Seattle saw a 60.6% decline, while San Francisco recorded a 49.3% reduction in fatal crashes during similar periods of infrastructure investment.

The key to these successes lies in thinking about the broader network. Cities that connect protected bike lanes into comprehensive networks see exponentially better results than those installing isolated segments. Evidence from Austin, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. shows ridership gains of 21 to 171% when protected lanes connect into networks — with proportional safety improvements following.

Philadelphia offers another compelling example. After expanding its protected bike lane network, the city saw a 95% increase in ridership. More cyclists using protected infrastructure means fewer riding on sidewalks — New York City documented sidewalk riding dropping by up to 84% after installing protected lanes, directly enhancing pedestrian safety.

Not all bike lanes deliver equal safety benefits. A 13-year analysis of more than 17,000 fatalities and 77,000 severe injuries across major U.S. cities revealed that only physically separated protected bike lanes improve safety. Painted lanes showed no benefit — and in some cases increased risk compared to unmarked roads. The distinction is crucial: physical separation changes driver behavior and creates genuine protection.

Research from the University of Colorado Denver and University of New Mexico, with findings highlighted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, confirms that cities with more protected bike lane footage per square mile experience fewer fatalities and serious injuries across all road users. However, the study also highlighted that design quality matters. Lanes with frequent driveway crossings, like Washington D.C.'s 15th Street NW, pose higher risks than fully separated or raised designs.

The most effective protected bike lanes use concrete barriers, planters, or parked cars as buffers — not just flexible posts. These robust separations cut cyclist-motorist crashes by 53% while reducing injuries for all street users. Streets with these high-quality protected lanes experience 28% fewer injuries per mile than those without any bike infrastructure.

Despite overwhelming evidence, some community members worry that bike lanes make streets more dangerous. The data tells a different story. New York City's comprehensive analysis shows protected lanes reduce total deaths and serious injuries by 18.1%. For pedestrians specifically, these lanes cut deaths and serious injuries by 29.1%, with an even more impressive 39% reduction for seniors.

This safety improvement extends beyond direct infrastructure benefits. Protected bike lanes calm traffic speeds, encourage more predictable driver behavior, and create visual cues that remind all road users to stay alert. They transform chaotic, multi-use spaces into organized corridors where each mode of transportation has its designated place.

An April 2025 analysis of protected bike lane impacts reinforced these findings, directly countering narratives that bike infrastructure endangers streets. As cities expand these networks using federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we're seeing consistent safety improvements across diverse urban environments.

For advocates and community members pushing for safer streets, the evidence provides a clear roadmap. Focus on building connected networks rather than isolated lanes. Push for physically separated designs with robust barriers. Use city-specific data in local campaigns — statistics from peer cities can be powerful tools for change.

When engaging with local officials, emphasize that protected bike lanes aren't just cycling infrastructure, they're comprehensive safety improvements that benefit all road users, especially pedestrians. The 44% reduction in deaths and 50% drop in serious injuries across 12 major cities represents thousands of lives saved and injuries prevented.

Protected bike lanes represent one of the most effective tools we have for creating safer streets. The data from cities across the country proves that when we give each mode of transportation its own protected space, everyone benefits — especially our most vulnerable road users.

A.J. Bruning is a personal injury attorney at Bruning Law Firm in St. Louis, Missouri.

Why Protected Bike Lanes Are Good for All Road Users

CicLAvia in Los Angeles highlights the potential of Open Streets to create people-centered corridors.

When the 2026 World Cup arrives in the United States, host cities will face a familiar problem at an unfamiliar scale: how to move hundreds of thousands of people to and from matches without grinding to a halt. More lanes for cars won’t solve it. They never do.

What will help? A fast, visible multimodal transportation network that lets people move efficiently over short distances — by bike, on foot, and via transit. Thankfully, cities don’t need years or billion-dollar projects to make this happen. Even with the World Cup just weeks away, cities can use smart planning and quick-build tools to quickly deliver game-ready bike networks.

From Los Angeles to Atlanta to Boston, U.S. host cities have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move millions of fans more efficiently. While matches will be played in a handful of official host cities, surrounding communities — like Newark, Pasadena, and Fort Lauderdale — will also absorb a surge of visitors and need to plan accordingly.

Start with the trips people will actually take between hotels, transit hubs, fan zones, and stadiums. Map those connections first and focus on continuity over perfection. To help visitors understand the network, cities should publish a simple, highly visible “Bike to the Match” network map that links stadiums and official fan zones, hotels and visitor districts, major transit stations, and key neighborhood corridors. The goal is to create a clear, connected network that works on day one.

The network shouldn’t stop at city limits. Hotels, short-term rentals, and fan activity will spread across metro regions, putting pressure on smaller cities and towns that may be less prepared. Building connected bike networks across jurisdictions can help distribute demand and reduce congestion everywhere.

While not everyone will choose to ride a bike, multimodal improvements like a cohesive bike network will help reduce traffic congestion for those who still choose to drive. 

Bonus: These same improvements reflect the kind of low-stress, connected bike networks that drive stronger City Ratings scores.

Use Open Streets to Create Instant Capacity and Turn Streets Into Fan Zones

The most successful World Cup host cities won’t just move crowds, they’ll turn streets into part of the experience.

One of the fastest ways to expand capacity is to open key streets to people walking and biking. Open Streets programs like CicLAvia regularly draw tens of thousands into people-centered corridors. For the World Cup, cities can use the same playbook on match days and high-traffic weekends to create safe, high-capacity routes to stadiums and fan zones. To do so, cities should focus on priority corridors, temporarily closing them to through traffic while allowing biking, walking, and limited local access, as well as staffing them with clear wayfinding and traffic management.

These corridors can also function as linear fan zones that bring the city to life with vendors and local businesses, music and live programming, watch parties, and sponsor activations.

Fans arrive together — by bike, on foot, or via transit — already immersed in the atmosphere instead of stuck in traffic. Businesses along the route see increased foot traffic, and cities gain a flexible, low-cost way to manage crowds. When done right, Open Streets don’t just solve congestion, they turn mobility into a signature part of the World Cup experience.

Not every street can be fully opened to people walking and biking. That’s where quick-build infrastructure comes in. Using paint, posts, and temporary barriers, cities can install protected bike lanes in a matter of weeks. Cities should focus on connecting Open Streets corridors to one another, linking neighborhoods to the main network, and creating safe access to transit hubs.

Cities can also treat these routes as real-world pilot projects — tracking ridership, safety, and usage to identify which corridors should become permanent improvements after the World Cup.

Make It Comfortable for First-Time Riders

World Cup visitors won’t be transportation experts. Many will be navigating a new city for the first time. That makes comfort and clarity essential:

Separate bike space from vehicular traffic wherever possible. 

Simplify intersections with clear markings.

Use bold, consistent wayfinding so routes are easy to follow.

If it feels safe and intuitive, people will use it. If it feels confusing or dangerous, they won’t.

Cities need to meet the demand that will come from an influx of visitors who do not have their own bikes with them. That means quickly scaling up bike share systems by adding more bikes; installing temporary docking stations near stadiums, transit hubs, hotel hubs, and fan zones; and promoting simple, short-term passes for visitors.

Hotels and event organizers can help promote access, making bike share the easiest option for short trips.

Even the best network fails without a secure place to park. Host cities should treat bike parking as essential infrastructure with large, staffed bike valet areas at stadiums, temporary racks at fan zones and along major routes, and clear signage so people know where to go. When bike parking is easy and secure, more people choose to ride, whether they’re heading to a stadium, stopping at the grocery store, or visiting a local park.

As more Americans use e-bikes, cargo bikes, and shared micromobility options, cities must also consider bike parking that works for a wide range of riders and devices, including visible racks outside of neighborhood businesses, bike corrals that replace a single car parking space, secure bike rooms at apartment buildings, and longer-term weather-protected parking near transit stations and downtown job centers.

Biking works best when it’s an integrated part of a larger system. Open Streets and bike routes should feed directly into transit stations, making it easy to combine transportation modes. This approach expands the reach of transit and reduces pressure on any single system.

The most important decision cities can make is to treat these changes as more than temporary. Quick-build lanes can become permanent. Open Streets corridors can evolve into recurring programs that help community members come together and experience the joy of riding a bike. Bike share expansions can serve residents long after the final match. While the World Cup is a deadline, it’s also an opportunity to accelerate projects that cities already need.

The cities that get this right will show the rest of the country what’s possible when streets are designed for people, with the opportunity to leave behind something even more valuable than a successful global event: a multimodal transportation system that serves residents and visitors for years to come.

The 2026 World Cup is a rare chance to transform mobility in cities nationwide. PeopleForBikes is here to help get it right. We can provide the resources to turn temporary, game day infrastructure into permanent, world-class networks. Don't let the momentum stop at the final match. Contact PeopleForBikes at info@peopleforbikes.org to learn how we can support your city’s journey toward a safer, more connected future.

How World Cup Host Cities Can Move Millions By Bike

Every year, PeopleForBikes uses the Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) to produce our annual City Ratings, a data-driven measure of how well a city’s bike network connects people to the places they want to go. This program helps cities identify gaps in their bike networks, highlights opportunities to improve, and benchmarks progress over time.

Since its inception in 2017, the BNA has undergone multiple iterations, including accounting for speed limit differences (2019) and removing the community survey as the program expanded (2021). These updates have steadily improved the accuracy with which City Ratings reflect real-world bike networks.

For 2026, PeopleForBikes is introducing a new set of methodology changes to the BNA to feature the most up-to-date data, reflect best practices in street design, and incorporate feedback from City Ratings users.

With these updates, some cities may see score changes that reflect the updated methodology rather than recent infrastructure changes. As a result, comparisons between 2025 and 2026 should be interpreted with this updated methodology in mind. By introducing these improvements all at once, we can establish a consistent baseline for City Ratings so that future year-over-year changes can more reliably reflect real progress on the ground.

City Ratings are calculated based on the low-stress connectivity between where people live and important everyday destinations. These destinations fall into six main categories: People, Opportunity (employment, jobs), Core Services (medical care, grocery stores), Recreation, and Retail. Each census block is scored based on its access to these six categories, and then a population weighted average is taken of all block scores to calculate a community’s overall City Rating. Weighting by population means that the scores of census blocks with a higher number of people are going to have a greater effect on the overall rating.

What Changed in the 2026 City Ratings and How It Affects Your Score

City Ratings now incorporates 2020 U.S. Census data, which became available in stages through 2023 and 2024, replacing the 2010 baseline used in prior years. To maintain consistency in year-over-year comparisons, City Ratings relies on stable national datasets, which are then incorporated once complete detailed releases are made public.

This update provides a more current view of where people live, improving how the BNA measures access to people. As a result, the People score and overall weighting better reflect today’s population distribution. For example, if a neighborhood with strong bike infrastructure has grown in population, that increased access is now captured in the score.

The BNA has also been updated to use the latest data from the U.S. Census’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES), which helps us better understand where jobs are actually located within a city and increase the precision of the City Ratings Opportunity score. 

Together, these two changes strengthen how City Ratings measures access to people and jobs — two core components of a well-connected bike network.

Updated Bike Facility Standards Based on NACTO Guidance

In 2025, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) released the third edition of its Urban Bikeway Design Guide. The guide includes updated standards for street design, outlining best practices for building low-stress bike networks for people of all ages and abilities. In accordance with this guide, the criteria for classifying streets as high- or low-stress have been updated in the BNA. 

For buffered and conventional bike lanes, lower speed limits are now required for the road to be considered low stress. These updates align City Ratings with current best practices for low-stress bike networks, reflecting how street design standards have evolved in the U.S. over time.

Exclusion of Destinations and Roads Outside City Boundaries

In previous versions of City Ratings, the Bicycle Network Analysis included some roads and destinations just beyond city limits — typically within one to two miles — as part of a city’s score. In some cases, that meant scores were influenced by infrastructure outside a city’s control. Based on feedback from City Ratings users, the 2026 update limits the analysis to roads and destinations within official city boundaries. This ensures each City Ratings score reflects the bike infrastructure and connectivity a city can directly plan, build, and maintain. This change isolates each city’s score to its own network, without influence from nearby areas.

The BNA now excludes low-stress routes that require significant detours (more than 25% longer than a direct route), reflecting how people typically choose more direct travel options and avoid biking if long detours are required to do so safely. 

The retail category has been expanded to include all destinations tagged as ‘shop’ in OpenStreetMap. Previously, the BNA only used areas tagged as ‘retail’. However, it has become best practice in OpenStreetMap to tag individual locations as shops, while larger shopping areas with multiple stores are tagged as retail. This update will better reflect the presence of individual retail locations within a city.

Ferry terminals have also been added as a destination in the transit category. 

U.S. city boundaries are now standardized and fetched directly from the U.S. Census. Previously, boundaries came from multiple sources, including city governments, OpenStreetMap, and the Census.

In earlier versions of the BNA, some census blocks counted in a city’s score weren’t realistically reachable by bike. These areas weren’t connected to the rest of the network within a reasonable riding distance—often because of physical barriers like water bodies, mountains, or limited crossings. While they may appear close on a map, they aren’t practical to reach by bike. These areas are now excluded from scoring, so City Ratings reflect how well a network works where biking is actually possible, rather than being influenced by geographic constraints outside a city’s control.

More Accurate Classification of Bike Infrastructure

A number of small changes were implemented in the BNA to more accurately classify bike infrastructure. This includes fixes such as no longer classifying golf course paths as cycling infrastructure and updating tags for specific features, such as contraflow bike lanes or two-way protected bike lanes.

The BNA is open source, and all methodology updates are publicly available on the brokenspoke-analyzer GitHub repository. 

These updates mark a meaningful improvement in how City Ratings measures real-world bikeability. By using updated data, aligning with new design standards, and focusing on infrastructure within city control, the BNA now provides a clearer picture of how investments in bike infrastructure are improving connectivity for people riding bikes in communities throughout the U.S.

PeopleForBikes’ 2026 City Ratings will be released in June, highlighting communities that are building connected, low-stress networks — and where critical gaps remain.

2026 City Ratings Methodology Updates: What Is Changing and Why It Matters

PeopleForBikes is proud to launch our new Backyard Advocacy Toolkit, a practical, action-oriented resource designed to help bike industry leaders, retailers, suppliers, and partners make meaningful progress for better biking in their communities. From building great places to ride and expanding trail access to supporting workforce development and domestic manufacturing, the toolkit empowers industry members to make a difference locally and shape a better future for biking in their own backyards.

While PeopleForBikes works to advance policies and programs that support bicycling at the national, state, and community levels, some of the most transformative wins for better biking happen locally when members of the bike industry and local partners come together around a shared goal. The Backyard Advocacy Toolkit helps industry partners engage in these local conversations with confidence and purpose, offering strategies, case studies, and actionable guidance on how companies can strengthen communities, expand access to riding, and elevate the industry’s role in shaping local policy.

Payson Project Peloton

In Payson, Arizona, bike industry brands and organizations, including SRAM, Trek, Shimano, Giant, and Outride, set competition aside and worked with the local nonprofit Wheel Fun to transform youth cycling and community recreation. 

The new toolkit highlights real-world successes demonstrating the power of industry-community collaboration. In Colorado Springs, SRAM partnered with local advocates to secure Class 1 electric mountain bike access on designated trails, providing a clear model for how companies can help influence local policy. In Northwest Arkansas, industry partners are working with schools and workforce programs to build a strong, locally rooted talent pipeline that supports both outdoor recreation and domestic bicycle manufacturing. Across the Southeast, case studies show how industry collaboration, infrastructure, and direct policymaker engagement can help advance U.S. bicycle production and build a more resilient supply chain.

“Local engagement is often the catalyst for national impact,” said Martina Haggerty, PeopleForBikes’ vice president of infrastructure. “When companies take action close to home, they help more people ride, create safer and more connected communities, and strengthen the economic and cultural presence of the bike industry.”

With the launch of the toolkit, PeopleForBikes is calling on industry partners to get involved. Companies and retailers can leverage the toolkit to identify local projects, join or form advocacy coalitions, host demo rides for policymakers and local residents, support workforce programs, or advocate for safer, more connected places to ride in their regions. Every effort counts — from attending a city council meeting to hosting an employee volunteer day with a local advocacy group — and the toolkit provides step-by-step guidance to make participation simple and impactful.

The Backyard Advocacy Toolkit is a roadmap for action. By connecting businesses with proven strategies and replicable models, industry leaders can create measurable change in the communities where they live, work, and ride. Not sure where to start? PeopleForBikes is here to help.

Industry partners ready to take action can access the Backyard Advocacy Toolkit now. Questions? Contact PeopleForBikes Senior Manager of Recreation Policy Rachel Fussell at rachel@peopleforbikes.org.

PeopleForBikes’ Backyard Advocacy Toolkit Empowers the Bike Industry to Improve Biking Locally

In 2025, the United States reached a milestone that once felt unlikely: an estimated 4,400 directional miles of protected bike lanes and road-adjacent side paths nationwide, spanning nearly every state. This estimate, developed by PeopleForBikes, is the first recent national snapshot of protected bike lane mileage at scale in the U.S., reflecting decades of advocacy, policy change, and local leadership.

From a Handful of Cities to a National Network

Just a decade ago, protected bike lanes were far from mainstream in the U.S. Today, they’re increasingly common, helping make streets safer and biking a more accessible form of transportation and recreation for people of all ages and abilities.

The growth of protected bike lanes in U.S. cities is closely tied to PeopleForBikes’ origin. In the 1990s, bike industry leaders formed Bikes Belong, which evolved into what is now PeopleForBikes, in an effort to leverage federal funding for the creation of bicycle infrastructure. At the same time, transportation leaders in big cities nationwide were having similar conversations. Those discussions led to the creation of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), giving cities a place to learn from one another, push for smarter national policy, and take the lead on how our streets are designed. In 2011, NACTO published the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a practical manual for engineers to implement safer bike lanes.  The guide helped shift protected bike lanes from what some considered “experimental” to a standard practice in communities from coast to coast.

To complement the release of the new guide, PeopleForBikes launched the Green Lane Project in 2012. At the time, protected bike lanes existed in only a handful of U.S. cities: New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Chicago, among others. In 2013, there were only 24 protected bike lanes nationwide. By 2015, that number grew to more than 270, doubling roughly every two years through 2017.

As more protected bike lanes were installed, cities shifted their focus from individual projects to fully connected networks that tie into local trails and quieter neighborhood streets, making biking safer and more accessible.

PeopleForBikes tested that idea in 2017 with the Big Jump, working alongside 10 U.S. cities willing to rethink biking at the neighborhood scale. Efforts focused on building connected bike networks that supported daily trips and deepening community engagement, not just installing isolated bike lanes. Cities that followed this approach saw dramatic gains, with local ridership doubling (and in some cases, tripling).

Several years later, through PeopleForBikes’ Final Mile program, cities like Austin and Denver built hundreds of miles of protected lanes and network connections in just three years, more than three times the per-capita rate of comparable cities. In city after city, the pattern was the same.

Across both programs, cities moved faster and built more bike lanes when political leadership, local advocacy, and practical design expertise aligned. Dozens of other U.S. cities followed quickly behind.

Voters also show strong local support year after year, funding the expansion of bike networks by approving more than $49 billion in state and local funding for recreation and active transportation projects since 2019. PeopleForBikes’ VoteForBikes program helps communities turn that support into action by connecting with voters, shaping ballot measures, and securing funding for safer, more connected bike networks.

But protected bike lanes are only part of the story. Thousands of miles of rail-trails, greenways, and mountain bike routes also crisscross the country. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy estimates that over the past two decades, known rail-trail mileage has grown from about 12,000 miles to more than 25,000, while the broader category of mapped multi-use trails (including rail-trails) expanded from roughly 25,000 miles in 2013 to more than 42,500 miles today. This growth reflects both new trail construction and improved documentation of previously unmapped trails. Linked to protected bike lanes, these trails open the door to more everyday trips, weekend rides, and everything in between.

This same pattern is evident in PeopleForBikes’ annual City Ratings. As protected bike lanes began to link together into real networks, more cities crossed the critical threshold score of 50, the tipping point to becoming a great place to bike. In those places, people can ride to work, school, or daily errands without being forced into dangerous network gaps.

Measuring a Growing Network at a National Scale

With these pieces in place, protected bike lanes spread quickly over the past five years. With that growth came a new challenge: measuring the now thousands of miles of protected bike lanes accurately at a national scale.

Tracking projects by hand was no longer feasible. To solve this issue, PeopleForBikes developed a Protected Bike Lane Inventory in 2025 using OpenStreetMap data and a geometry-based method that distinguishes on-road protected lanes and road-adjacent side paths from off-street trails. By layering map data with spatial factors like road proximity and alignment, this method provides an estimate of protected bike lanes and road-adjacent side paths nationwide. Counting directional miles also helps reflect what riders experience on the ground.

Put together, the data points to about 4,400 directional miles of protected bike lanes across the U.S. as of 2025 — a forty-fold increase since 2000. No dataset captures everything, but this approach comes closer than anything before to showing both how much has been built and where work still needs to be done.

In 2000, there were an estimated 108 directional miles of protected bike lanes in the United States. In 2020, the miles of U.S. protected bike lanes grew to about 800. By 2025, that number was estimated to have grown to approximately 4,400. Directional mileage measures bikeways by direction of travel. If protected bike lanes run on both sides of a street, or if a bi-directional protected lane exists on one side, each direction is counted separately and summed to produce the total mileage.

Anyone can help improve the picture. By updating OpenStreetMap with new protected lanes or adding details like directionality, contributors make it easier to see where networks are growing and where gaps still exist.

While 4,400 miles marks real progress, many European cities remain decades ahead. The Netherlands’ bike networks grew out of the Stop de Kindermoord movement in the 1970s, when parents pushed back against streets that had become dangerous for children. In 2007, political leaders in Seville, Spain, committed to building a 50-mile bike network and completed it in under two years. In London and Paris, the Olympic Games created hard deadlines, political will, and funding opportunities that helped both cities quickly build robust bike networks.

The U.S. has taken a longer, more fragmented path. After years of advocacy, connected bike networks are finally taking shape as communities learn to adapt what worked elsewhere to fit their own local politics, street layouts, and funding realities. Programs like the Green Lane Project, The Big Jump, and Final Mile helped translate those ideas into real projects that could succeed in American cities and towns of all sizes.

The results are visible: safer streets, stronger business districts, more transportation choices, and reduced congestion for those who choose to drive.

As protected lanes and trails continue to connect into larger systems, this milestone is a starting point for the next phase of work — one focused less on proving the concept and more on getting to work building places where safer, more livable streets are simply the norm.

The cities that continue making progress tend to focus on the same basics: they slow traffic, build protected lanes, fix intersections, and connect gaps to create easily accessible networks.

Trusted data also plays an important role. Cities that track what they’ve built and keep OpenStreetMap data up to date have a much clearer sense of what’s working and where the next investments will make the biggest difference. That combination of design, policy, and feedback is captured in PeopleForBikes’ SPRINT framework.

Cities that get these fundamentals right tend to see the same results: ridership grows faster, public support holds up over time, and biking becomes an option for more everyday trips. The jump to 4,400 miles shows what can happen when those conditions line up.

Every vote, every city plan, and every mapped mile helps the U.S. move closer to the safer streets seen in places like the Netherlands, Seville, and Paris. You can be a part of making biking better for everyone across America by becoming a PeopleForBikes Foundation member. Join us today.

4,400 Miles and Counting: How the U.S. Built a Protected Bike Lane Movement

Topics

City Riding