SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Walk Score®, a Redfin company, today released its 2015 ranking of the most bikeable U.S. cities with populations over 300,000 and announced the expansion of its Bike Score ranking to a total of 154 U.S. cities and more than 10,000 neighborhoods. With a Bike Score of 81.3, Minneapolis is the most bikeable city, holding a strong lead over San Francisco (75.1) and Portland (72.0).
Bike Score Rank of Large U.S. Cities
| Rank | City |
Bike |
||||
| 1 | Minneapolis, MN | 81.3 | ||||
| 2 | San Francisco, CA | 75.1 | ||||
| 3 | Portland, OR | 72.0 | ||||
| 4 | Denver, CO | 71.3 | ||||
| 5 | Boston, MA | 70.3 | ||||
| 6 | Chicago, IL | 70.2 | ||||
| 7 |
Washington, DC |
69.5 | ||||
| 8 | Sacramento, CA | 68.9 | ||||
| 9 | Tucson, AZ | 67.9 | ||||
| 10 | Philadelphia, PA | 67.5 | ||||
| 11 | Long Beach, CA | 66.4 | ||||
| 12 | New York, NY | 65.1 | ||||
| 13 | Seattle, WA | 63.0 | ||||
| 14 | Oakland, CA | 60.9 | ||||
| 15 | Aurora, CO | 60.8 | ||||
| 16 | New Orleans, LA | 60.1 | ||||
| 17 | Miami, FL | 59.7 | ||||
| 18 | Albuquerque, NM | 59.6 | ||||
| 19 | Mesa, AZ | 58.5 | ||||
| 20 | Santa Ana, CA | 57.1 | ||||
“Biking is central to the healthy Minneapolis lifestyle and to a lot of people’s decisions about where to live in and around the city,” said James Garry, a Redfin agent and avid biker in Minneapolis. “In the past year, several of my clients have chosen to buy smaller houses in South Minneapolis rather than larger, similarly priced ones in the suburbs, simply so they could bike to work during the week and around Lake Harriet on weekends.”
“The future of biking in cities is to have a grid of protected bike lanes,” said Matt Lerner, Walk Score co-founder. “The cities at the top of the Bike Score ranking are making progress in this direction.”
Thanks to investments in infrastructure such as protected bike lanes and networks of bike paths, several cities saw big increases in their Bike Scores since the 2013 ranking. On average, cities that ranked in the top 20 saw an increase of more than two Bike Score points. Chicago’s Bike Score increased by almost nine full points, from 61.5 in 2013 to 70.2 today. In the past two years, the Chicago Department of Transportation has launched and grown the Divvy bike share system and expanded its on-street bike network to include more than 225 miles of bike lanes and routes. Mayor Emanuel’s Chicago Streets for Cycling Plan 2020 includes completion of a 645-mile network of on-street bikeways by 2020.
In San Francisco, cyclists have seen more protected bike lanes added over the past couple years, reflected in a five-point Bike Score increase from 70.0 in 2013 to 75.1 today. And there are more to come, as the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) last month announced its commitment to start construction on more than 24 miles of bike infrastructure improvements.
Methodology
Bike Score measures whether a location is good and safe for biking on a scale from 0 - 100 based on four equally weighted components:
- Bike lanes
- Hills
- Destinations and road connectivity
- Share of local workers’ commutes traveled by bicycle
To read the full report, click or paste the following link: https://www.redfin.com/blog/2015/05/most-bikeable-cities.html.
About Walk Score
Walk Score makes it easy to find walkable places to live. Walk Score’s website and iPhone app let consumers shop for apartments and rentals by commute time, access to public transit and proximity to “Gotta Have” amenities like coffee shops, grocery stores, schools, parks, car shares, and more. Visit http://www.walkscore.com/apartments to get started. Walk Score believes that walkable neighborhoods with access to public transit, shorter commutes, and proximity to the people and places you love are the key to a happier, healthier and more sustainable lifestyle. Walk Score delivers more than 10 million scores for apartment and home addresses per day across a network of more than 30,000 real estate sites. Walk Score’s Advisory Board includes urban planning, environmental and technical experts from organizations such as Sightline Institute and The Brookings Institution. According to independent research conducted by CEOs for Cities, one point of Walk Score adds up to $3,000 to home values. Find your neighborhood at http://www.walkscore.com.
About Redfin
Redfin (www.redfin.com) is a next-generation real estate brokerage that represents people buying and selling homes. Founded by technologists, Redfin employs a team of experienced, full-service real estate agents who are advocates, not salespeople, earning customer-satisfaction bonuses, not just commissions. Redfin.com features all the broker-listed homes for sale, as well as for-sale-by-owner properties that don’t pay brokers a commission. Redfin also offers online tools, built by its own software engineers, that make the entire process of buying or selling a home easier and more fun. The company serves major markets across the U.S. and has closed nearly $20 billion in home sales. In 2012, Redfin was named one of The DIGITAL 100: World’s Most Valuable Private Tech Companies by Business Insider.
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