The 5 Most-Bikeable Big Cities in the USA — Can You Name Them?

PeopleForBikes does annual rankings of the most-bikeable cities in the USA. It ranks cities in three categories — large, medium, and small. Various factors go into the rankings. Naturally, it takes time to make big changes in bike infrastructure or launch big bike programs, so rankings don’t change dramatically, but some exceptional programs and policies can shoot a city up the rankings fairly fast.

This year has a new #1, but there’s also a slight asterisk there. PeopleForBikes decided this year to split out the 5 boroughs of New York City (NYC) as individual “cities.” The new #1 is Brooklyn, NY, with 73 points. It knocked former #1 Minneapolis to #2, but if you look at the graph below, Brooklyn would have won in 2024 as well, after a sharp rise in bikeability from 2023 to 2024. Minneapolis scored 72 points on the PeopleForBikes rating system.

Seattle claimed 3rd (with 66 points), and then Queens and San Francisco tied for 4th (with 63 points each).

In the midsized city category, #1 was David, California, which has been the most bikeable city in the US for … decades. It scored 81 points. In 2nd place was Berkeley, CA, with 73 points. Corvallis, Oregon, took 3rd place with 71 points, and Boulder, Colorado, took 4th place with 70 points. Rounding out the top 5 was Cambridge, Massachusetts, with 68 points.

You’ll have a harder time identifying the cities in the small city category, but at the top is a city with a perfect score of 100! That’s Mackinac Island, Michigan, which is car-free. Hence the perfect score. Provincetown, Massachusetts, took 2nd place with a score of 96, and Sauk City, Wisconsin, took 3rd place with a score of 90. There was then a four-way tie for 4th! With a score of 89, we have Springdale, UT; Washburn, WI; Fayette, MO; and Murdock, NE.

One nice thing to see is how much geographical variation there is across these rankings. True, the East Coast and the West Coast do dominate, but there are also cities from states in the middle of the US. Here’s a chart showing the top 10 cities in each category:

“Those superstar cities won their impressive scores on the strength of slow local speed limit policies, connected and protected bike lane networks, next-level data transparency and three other factors that collectively make up the organization’s methodology. But they didn’t outshine the lower-ranked cities on the list, at least when it came to one key metric: how quickly they’re getting better,” Streetsblog writes.

“And considering that 234 U.S. cities scored 50 or higher in the ratings this year — up from just 33 cities in 2019 — the race for ‘most-improved’ was arguably steeper than the race for the top spot.” Indeed! And that’s the big, great takeaway — hundreds of cities across the United States are improving their bikeability year after year. Bike infrastructure keeps improving, roads are being made safer, and more and more bike-oriented programs are being launched. A simple but highly effective policy, however, is just lowering speed limits (which also makes cars more fuel efficient). One small city — Hailey, Idaho — jumped from 24 points to 77 points after the city dropped speed limits to 15 to 20 mph on many streets.

Circling back to New York City, PeopleForBikes writes: “For the first time, this year’s ratings divide New York City into its five boroughs, recognizing the local-level work being done to improve bicycling. Three boroughs landed in the top 10 best large U.S. cities for biking for 2025: Manhattan took the #10 spot with a score of 51 (out of a possible 100), Queens came in at #4 with a score of 63, and Brooklyn took this year’s #1 spot with a score of 73, narrowly surpassing last year’s top-scoring large city, Minneapolis.

“So how did Brooklyn become the best large U.S. city for biking? An impressive network of safe and connected places to ride. New York City as a whole is home to 1,550 miles of bike lanes, bike paths, and neighborhood greenways, making it North America’s largest bicycle network. Brooklyn specifically has more miles of bike lanes than any other borough.”

I look forward to seeing the 2026 rankings and how things change!

Many more details on this year’s rankings can be found here and here.