Redmond Ranked Low For Bike Friendliness In National Survey

REDMOND, WA — The Seattle-Bellevue area is home to tens of thousands of cyclists, miles of bike lanes, and who knows how many Lime and Uber rideshare bikes — but that doesn't mean the region is a biker's paradise.

The nonprofit group PeopleForBikes published its 2019 nationwide city ratings this week, and every Puget Sound city on the list earn middle to low ratings. The group used a scoring system to evaluate cities based on five key areas: ridership, safety, network, acceleration and reach.

Each city was ranked on a scale of five stars. In Puget Sound, Seattle scored the highest with 2.3 stars overall. Seattle also had the highest score for bike ridership, but it scored pretty low for "acceleration," which is a measure of how quickly the city is building bike infrastructure. Seattle did get a relatively high rating for the existing bike network, however.

In March, Seattle announced that it would not include bike lanes along a rebuilt 35th Avenue Northeast, a major artery connecting Lake City, Wedgwood, and the University District. Meanwhile, SDOT build just over 2 miles of bike lanes in 2018, the lowest amount in three years.

Bellevue, meanwhile, is looking to expand its downtown bikeway, a project that is technically still in the pilot phase. In Redmond, work is underway on a "Spine Network" of bike infrastructure, but the project will only be about half done by 2030.

Here’s the breakdown for each city in the region that made PeopleForBikes' list.

Seattle (2.3 stars)

• Ridership: 3.2
• Safety: 2.1
• Network: 3.1
• Reach: 2.3
• Acceleration: 0.7

Bellevue (1.6 stars)

• Ridership: 1.7
• Safety: 2.3
• Network: 2.1
• Reach: 1.4
• Acceleration: 0.5

Redmond (1.7 stars)

• Ridership: 1.8
• Safety: 2.2
• Network: 2.3
• Reach: 2
• Acceleration: 0.6

Kent ranked the lowest of the 12 Washington cities on the list with 1.3 stars overall. Kent was also one of the lowest rated in the nation, falling just behind Oklahoma City and Trenton, N.J.

Colorado is home to the two best cities for biking, the report found. With scores of 3.74 and 3.64 out of five, Boulder and Fort Collins outpaced the rest of the country. Here are the 10 best cities for biking and their scores:

1. Boulder, CO — 3.7
2. Fort Collins, CO — 3.6
3. Eugene, OR — 3.4
4. Manhattan — 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

Conversely, two cities — Pittsford, New York, and Cochituate, Massachusetts — tied for the lowest score, the report found, though sufficient data wasn’t available for three categories in both cities.

Overall, the share of commuters who bike to work fell 4.7 percent year-over-year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 single-year commuting estimates in the American Community Survey. Furthermore, 37 of the 70 largest cities also saw a year-over-year decrease in the share of biking commuters, according to the League of American Bicyclists.

Cities were scored on a five-point scale. Each category received an equal weight.

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.

The ratings play a key role in making biking better for everyone, said Tim Blumenthal, president at PeopleForBikes. Efforts this year were 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,” said Blumenthal.

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.