There are many unspectacular but important things a city can do to gain our consideration for this list. Maybe you've heard of them, or maybe—given the pace of change these days—you've already begun to enjoy them: segregated bike lanes, municipal bike racks and bike boulevards, to name a few. If you have those things in your town, cyclists probably have the ear of the local government—another key factor. To make our Top 50, a city must also support a vibrant and diverse bike culture. It must have smart, savvy bike shops. A few notes: We considered only cities with populations of 100,000 or more. We strove for geographical diversity, to avoid having a list dominated by California's many bike-oriented cities. If your town isn't named below—or if it falls on our worst-cities list—then use this as an opportunity to do something about it, like cyclists in Miami did after their city earned a black mark in 2008. And if your city is one of the 50 lauded below? Go out and enjoy a ride.
1 Minneapolis | 26 Boston |
2 Portland, OR | 27 Philadelphia |
3 Boulder, CO | 28 Pittsburgh |
4 Seattle | 29 Charleston, SC |
5 Eugene, OR | 30 Arlington, VA |
6 San Francisco | 31 Sioux Falls, SD |
7 Madison, WI | 32 Boise, ID |
8 New York City | 33 Kansas City, MO |
9 Tucson, AZ | 34 Columbus, OH |
10 Chicago | 35 Tulsa, OK |
11 Austin, TX | 36 Grand Rapids, MI |
12 Denver | 37 Billings, MT |
13 Washington, DC | 38 St. Louis |
14 Ann Arbor, MI | 39 Cleveland |
15 Phoenix/Tempe, AZ | 40 Greensboro, NC |
16 Gainesville, FL | 41 Lexington/Fayette, KY |
17 Albuquerque, NM | 42 Omaha, NE |
18 Colorado Springs, CO | 43 Salt Lake City |
19 Salem, OR | 44 Miami |
20 Scottsdale, AZ | 45 Indianapolis |
21 Louisville, KY | 46 Fargo, ND |
22 Chattanooga, TN | 47 Anchorage, AK |
23 Long Beach, CA | 48 Baltimore |
24 Cary, NC | 49 Little Rock, AR |
25 Milwaukee | 50 Rochester, NY |
To prepare this list, we referenced the Bicycling and Walking in the United States 2010 Benchmarking Report, prepared by the Alliance for Biking and Walking; the League of American Bicyclists' Bicycle Friendly America project; data from Mediamark Research, Inc., Dun & Bradstreet and The Nielsen Company; and interviews with national and local advocates, bike shops and other experts.