Annual ‘Best Places To Bike' Report Ranks Va. Cities Low, Rankles Officials And Advocates

By Ian Stewart, Virginia Mercury

July 8, 2025

Doug Allen knows good biking infrastructure when he sees it. The Richmond resident has been to Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin — places widely considered some of the most bicycle friendly cities in the world.

“Every time I travel somewhere, I try to check out the transit and the biking if I can,” he said.

When PeopleForBikes’ national report highlighting the best places to bike debuted in late June, Virginia cities ranked low on the list. The news comes after the state has beefed up bike infrastructure to improve access and safety for cyclists. According to a bicycle inventory map released in April, the Commonwealth boasts roughly 1,600 miles of shared-use paths, which include 967 miles of bicycle lanes — many of them buffered.

Richmond is ranked 37th in the state, just below the cities of Norfolk (35th) and well below Arlington, which came in third in the state. All three are considered midsize cities. The rankings consider if bike infrastructure is close to where people live, if they can bike to jobs, schools, grocery and retail stories, and if they can access public transportation.

“This is a data-driven process,” said Grace Stonecipher, infrastructure analytics and research manager for PeopleForBikes, which has released the report for eight years. “We’re using the same data on every single city all around the world. And we’re using the best available data.”

Stonecipher said they take in information on roads and bike infrastructure and rate every street as high stress or low stress, which includes things like speed limits, number of lanes, and the impact that bike infrastructure is having on the street.

For Allen and some officials in the state’s capital city, the report triggered both surprise and skepticism.

“I think any sort of huge aggregate rankings like that, you have to take with a grain of salt,” he said.

Despite recent infrastructure improvements, Richmond ranks low

Richmond’s low ranking strikes Allen as odd, considering biking infrastructure improvements he’s witnessed over the past 10 years.

“The infrastructure has gotten much better. Back when I first came here, I don’t think there was any,” Allen said. “There might have been a few striped bike lanes, but as far as something really safe and dedicated, there was nothing, and now there is a decent amount.”

The ranking also doesn’t sit well with Richmond city officials. In an email to the Virginia Mercury, they said even though PeopleForBikes appears to “have an up-to-date inventory of bike infrastructure, including recent trail projects, the methodology used for rating stress levels, while interesting, does not make sense.”

The report includes streets that are not in the city and are not owned by the city, officials cited. Cities like Richmond and counties are in charge of most of their streets, while the Virginia Department of Transportation manages the rest, such as Broad Street, as well as state highways.

Richmond touts more than 80 miles of bike lanes and that they’ve been globally recognized by the “Dutch Cycling Embassy,” also pointed out, “and the National Association of City Transportation Officials have been praising Richmond’s approach to city building.”

Stonecipher said part of the reason some cities’ ranking may be low is because of a lack of information provided by city officials.

“All of our infrastructure data comes from OpenStreetMap, a platform where folks can go in and update their data themselves,” she said. “Every year before we do the city ratings, we send out a big email that says, ‘All right, everybody get in there and update your data. Show us all the cool things that you’ve done this year.’ And so we are reliant on public involvement.”

She said that because they’re rating so many cities around the world, they can’t go into every single city themselves, but “we love to work with local advocates, partners, (and) city planners to make sure that that data is as accurate as possible.”

Allen does say that the rankings are a good reminder that even though the city has come far over the past decade, there’s still a lot of work to do.

“I think the takeaway is that, yes, this may not be the most perfect rating system, but I think it does highlight the places where we still need to make some improvements,” he said.

So what’s the best biking city in Virginia?

Cape Charles ranked as the number one biking spot in the commonwealth and also ranks 51st in the nation. Cape Charles is a small, Eastern Shore beach town in Northampton County with just under 1,300 residents.

But is it fair to compare Cape Charles to larger cities?

“One thing I noticed right off the bat is that all the rankings favor small cities,” said Allen. “Cape Charles, which I’ve been to, I wouldn’t say it’s like a biking paradise. It’s basically a town of three streets next to the bay.”

This is why PeopleForBikes allows users to use filters, such as by population, when selecting the best places to bike. The tool works best when people use it keeping context in mind.

“I would encourage folks to dig into the maps and try to understand why,” she said. “Roads that have bike infrastructure might still be high stress. Maybe you have bike lanes on two streets, but getting across the street is really difficult because the bike infrastructure stops 20 feet before the intersection.”

If residents of any locality are unsatisfied with their city or county’s ranking, they can put PeopleForBikes’ SPRINT principles into action to improve their score. The principles — which include safe speeds, protected bike lanes, reallocated space, intersection treatments, network connections and trusted data — and their framework “enable your city to change high-stress streets into low-stress streets, providing safe and comfortable routes for bicyclists of all ages and abilities,” PeopleForBikes website reads.

This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury. For more stories from the Virginia Mercury, visit Virginia Mercury.com.