Here's How Queens Fares In List Of Best Places For Cyclists

QUEENS, NY — Queens is one of the best places in America for biking, according to the nonprofit group PeopleForBikes, which published its 2019 nationwide city ratings Sunday.

The group used a scoring system to evaluate cities based on five key areas: ridership, safety, network, acceleration and reach. Cities were scored on a five-point scale, with each category receiving equal weight.

Queens got 3.1 stars out of five, coming just behind Brooklyn and Manhattan. The top-rated city for cyclists — Boulder, Colorado — got 3.7 stars.

Here’s the breakdown for Queens:

• Ridership: 1.8
• Safety: 2.7
• Network: 2.9
• Reach: 2.8
• Acceleration: 2.7

Ridership referred to how many bicyclists were in a community — both recreational and commuters — while safety looked at deaths and injuries to bicyclists, walkers and drivers.

The network score was determined based on the quality of a city’s bike paths — how completely it connects people, both to each other and to local destinations using “comfortable routes,” the authors wrote.

Reach evaluated how well a community’s “low-stress network” served its community members. This score took into account various demographic data to assess gaps in access and connectivity for historically underserved populations.

And lastly, acceleration looked at how fast a community was improving its biking infrastructure and how successful its programs have been at getting more people to ride.

Here are the 10 best cities for biking and their overall scores:

1. Boulder, CO — 3.7
2. Fort Collins, CO — 3.6
3. Eugene, OR — 3.4
4. Manhattan, NY — 3.4
5. Arlington, VA — 3.4
6. Portland, OR — 3.3
7. Brooklyn, NY — 3.3
8. Lawrence, KS — 3.3
9. Minneapolis, MN — 3.2
10. Madison, WI — 3.2

The ratings play a key role in making biking better for everyone, said Tim Blumenthal, president at PeopleForBikes. Efforts this year focused on engaging more cities to improve the accuracy of the ratings.

"Providing annual ratings helps cities make quick, cost-effective progress toward building a network where people of all ages and bicycling abilities can ride safely and easily to destinations all around town," Blumenthal said.

The organization also offered city planners tips to improve their biking scores. Among them: designating bike-to-work days (or weeks), installing showers and parking at businesses, establishing year-round school biking programs, lowering residential speed limits to 20 mph or less, and adding comfortable bike lanes to arterial roads.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.