Salt Lake City moves into #26 spot on Bicycling Magazine's Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities list

Bicycling Magazine has published their Top 50 Most Bike-Friendly Cities list every year since 1995 (except for 2011). In 2010, Salt Lake City ranked 43rd. This year, our state capitol and bicycling flagship city snuck up seventeen spots to claim 26th place.

To determine the top 50 bike-friendly cities, magazine editors and contributed evaluated cities with more than 90,000 people (which takes Davis, CA out of the running - a city of 65,000 with more than 20% of its trip done by bicycle, the highest in the nation). The rankings were determined using data from the Alliance for Biking and Walking and the League of American Bicyclists, as well as "input from local advocates and bike-ped coordinators." Bicycling also states that in order to make the list, or at least do well in the rankings, a city should have a "robust cycling infrastructure" and a "vibrant bike culture".

Among Salt Lake City's "claims to fame" and reasons why we were selected for the 26th spot:

- Mayor Ralph Becker's tenfold funding increase for bikeways - which led to 50 new bike lane miles and green, shared lanes downtown
- Ridership increase of 27% between 2010 and 2011
- City Creek Canyon Road, which climbs 5.7 miles from downtown to a coniferous forest, closed to cars on odd-numbered days between Memorial Day and Labor Day

And then, our biggest challenge, and perhaps the reason why we weren't ranked as high as other cities of similar size, with similar infrastructure, culture, and investment:

- Getting the state highway department up to speed on local and regional cycling initiatives. In 2011, for example, Foothill Drive was repaved without bike lanes.

Rounding out the top ten were some obvious choices, some of which were also chosen recently by Bikes Belong in their Green Lane Project to promote innovate bicycle infrastructure designs in cities.

1. Portland, Oregon
2. Minneapolis, Minnesota (last year's winner)
3. Boulder, Colorado
4. Washington D.C.
5. Chicago, Illinois
6. Madison, Wisconsin
7. New York City
8. San Francisco, California
9. Eugene, Oregon
10. Seattle, Washington

Jonathan Maus, publisher of BikePortland.org, wrote, in congratulations to his city, "It's worth noting that Bicycling seems to have put a lot more rigor into their analysis this year. In a press release about the ranking, Bicycling said, 'Portland cyclists are the vanguard of American cycling.'"

Portland, often cited as America's poster child for bicycle-friendly people and infrastructure, moved back up into the 1st place after being demoted by Bicycling to 2nd in 2010. Portland has claimed the first position every year that the rankings have been done, except for 2010.

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