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The 10 largest cities and boroughs in the U.S. all provided sustained actions to improve bicycling since last year, according to PeopleForBike’s 2025 city ratings, released today.
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Among cities with populations over 300,000, Baltimore, Cleveland and Fresno, California, showed the greatest score increases from 2024 to 2025 on a zero-to-100 scale. The top 10 largest cities scored above 50, which PeopleForBikes considers a critical tipping point in building momentum toward better bicycling in metropolitan areas, the organization said in a news release.
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“The places that are seeing the most correlation between projects getting built and score increases over time are the ones that are doing it in a planned, methodical way,” Martina Haggerty, vice president of infrastructure at PeopleForBikes, said in an interview.
Bicyclist fatalities in traffic collisions increased every year from 2017 to 2023, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. In 2023, the latest year for which complete data is available, 1,166 bike riders lost their lives on streets and roads.
Haggerty explained that connected bicycle-friendly infrastructure — such as protected bike lanes and dedicated bikeways — improves safety for cyclists and other road users. These routes are best when they also connect to neighborhoods, stores and other transit modes, she said.
“There are some cities that are building a lot of bike infrastructure, but they’re not doing it with that lens,” Haggerty said. She pointed out Chicago, which got an 11 score in the new rating, as such a city.
Washington, D.C., represents the opposite end of the spectrum. Its score grew from 36 in 2018 to 52 this year. “That’s due to filling in key connectivity gaps that puts that bike network together,” said Grace Stonecipher, PeopleForBikes Infrastructure Analytics and Research Manager. In general, the Northeast U.S. “ranks pretty highly,” Stonecipher said.
The first and only city with a 100 score was Mackinac Island in Michigan. The car-free island, with a population of 583, sits at the top of Lake Huron.
For its eighth year of city ratings, PeopleForBikes evaluated over 2,900 global cities. Paris and Delft, Netherlands, ranked among the highest-ranged worldwide cities. “In general, Europe averages quite a bit higher overall in their city rankings,” Stonecipher said. These cities often have slower speed limits, smaller vehicles and a longstanding culture of bike-riding, she added.
