Whether you bike for recreation, exercise or your commute, your local bike infrastructure plays a massive role in how comfortable you feel getting around on two wheels.
People For Bikes is a national organization based in Colorado that measures bike networks across the country and gives them a City Ratings score. A bike network is the sum of all the bike infrastructure in a given city — amenities including protected bike lanes, connected trails, safe intersections and more.
As it turns out, Wisconsin is a great state for biking! With an average City Ratings score of 48, we’re behind only New York and Alaska as the highest statewide scoring for biking. The score is weighted according to population.
“Wisconsin is doing really well, and we actually see pretty high scores and high averages across all three size categories,” says Grace Stonecipher, Infrastructure Analytics and Research manager at People For Bikes. “So it's not just that the big cities [in Wisconsin] are great for biking, the medium and the small ones are as well.”
Today, Milwaukee has a City Ratings score of 50, a major progress since 2018’s score of 27. But that improvement hasn’t happened without planning, Stonecipher says.
“The city of Milwaukee has made this goal of creating 50 new miles of protected bikeways by 2026,” she notes. “That kind concerted effort into increasing that bike network concept makes a big difference in overall connectivity of the city and therefore that score of 50.”
Stonecipher says that cities with scores of 50 and beyond tend to build momentum towards a stronger bike culture.
“[A score of 50 means] the infrastructure is there and so more people are biking,” she says. “And then when people see more people biking, they tend to want to bike, and then it's worth it to build more bike infrastructure because people are using it, and so that's a really exciting point to pass.”
Going into the City Ratings’ methodology, Stonecipher says the scores consider the amount of protected bike lanes, speed limits, road width, intersection safety and more to determine a cities’ overall “stress level” for cyclists.
“[You get] a feel of what might be low stress or high stress if you think about just a painted bike lane on the side of a four-lane road where the speed limit is 40 mph,” she says. “That might not feel that great to bike on, especially if we’re thinking about people of all ages and abilities, not just your professional cyclists."
In addition to stress level, the score also considers a city’s overall layout and network connectivity — whether, for example, its bike network is separated by high stress roads.
“In a small city, if you had a highway running through the middle of it, it might just totally cut off all bikes’ access from, say, the North side to the South side,” she says.
Stonecipher also highlights that cities like Milwaukee or Madison aren’t the only places that can be bike-friendly. Wisconsin’s Sauk City serves as a prime example of People For Bikes’ principles. It ranks No. 3 in the country for cyclists, with a City Ratings score of 90.
“Something that we see in Sauk City is that there's a lot of bike paths that parallel any of those roads that would be high stress, so it provides an alternate way to get places,” she says.
By watching out for public comment opportunities, transportation-related ballot measures and more, People With Bikes targets its advocacy at three levels: policy, infrastructure and participation. But Stonecipher says participation in your local bike network is the first step.
“Get out on a bike, see what the bike network looks like in your city, where the gaps are, where the great spots are and just start that flywheel going and get more people on bikes,” she says.
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