Austin Among Nation's Most Bike-Friendly Cities: Report

AUSTIN, TX — Austin is among the nation's top 20 best cities for bicyclists, according to a recent report.

To achieve its rankings, SmartAsset researchers examined data for 100 of the largest U.S. cities across myriad metrics — the percentage of communters biking to work, bicyclist fatalities, miles of protected bike lanes and the like — to achieve its list.

The reckoning yielded Austin in the 17th slot, with about 1.4 percent of commuters choosing to pedal to work. The capital city tied with the Dallas suburb of Plano, where 0.4 percent of commuters bike to their workplaces.

In landing on the list, cities join rarefield ranks given the relative rarity of biking to work. According to U.S. Bureau of the Census data, only one in about 200 Americans — a mere 0.5 percent — biked to work in 2018.

Yet the specter of COVID-19 has heightened use of bicycles as transport mode as an increasing number of people seek to avoid crowded subways or buses, researchers found. NPD Group tracked the trend, finding cycling industry sales in April 2020 were 75 percent higher than a year ago.

To learn more, read the full Best U.S. Cities For Cyclists report.

Chart via SmartAsset.

Austin and Plano were the only Texas cities to make the top 25 list as seen in the above chart.