Behind Your City's Score

PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings measures the quality of a city’s bike network. A bike network is a connected system of protected bike lanes, off-street paths, slow shared streets, and safe crossings that enables people to comfortably bike around a city.

Each city receives a City Ratings score on a scale of 0 - 100. A low score (0-20) indicates a weak bike network, meaning the city lacks safe bikeways or there are gaps in the network. A high score (80-100) indicates that most common destinations are accessible by safe, comfortable bike routes that serve people of all ages and abilities.

City Ratings scores are released annually each summer based on results from our Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA), a data analysis software that measures the quality and connectivity of a city’s bike network. The BNA assesses six factors captured in the acronym SPRINT:

Safe Speeds

Protected Bike Lanes

Reallocated Space

Intersection Treatments

Network Connections

Trusted Data

You can read more about SPRINT at How to Improve Your City’s Score. For more granular detail on how the BNA works, read the full methodology. For historical data and details on the software, visit our BNA Mechanics website.

Improve Your City's Data

The City Ratings score relies on data about streets, speed limits, bike infrastructure, and destinations documented in OpenStreetMap, a crowd-sourced map of the world. You can help improve our data by updating OpenStreetMap. Check out the following resources for guidance.

Tell Us About Your City

We encourage city staff or local advocates to respond to our annual City Snapshot survey. The City Snapshot ensures we have the most accurate data, provides feedback to improve the City Ratings program, and helps us share what your city is doing to grow its bike network. Sign up to be notified when we release the 2024 City Snapshot here: Update My City.

Anyone can provide general feedback on the City Ratings program using our City Ratings Feedback Form.