The Cascade Bicycle Club just released its annual scorecard suburban cities in the Puget Sound region based on their bikeability. The scorecard doesn’t rank cities directly; instead, it looks at what the largest 10 cities in the region are doing to promote bicycling, how they’re integrating biking into their overall planning efforts, and what the gaps are in planning for cyclists. Some interesting findings:
Overall, the rankings were as follows, with the first city ranking the highest: Kirkland, Redmond, Renton, Everett, Tacoma, Bellevue, Auburn, Kent, Federal Way, and Shoreline.
Of the 10 suburban cities, Redmond had the highest percentage of trips by bike: 1.5 percent of all commutes take place by bicycle, nearly three times as many as Bellevue, the next runner-up.
The crash rate was highest in Kent, where there were 32 collisions in 2009, and a crash rate of 0.75. The rate was lowest in Redmond and Shoreline, which both had a crash rate of .03, with 21 and 7 bike collisions per year, respectively.
Half the cities had a stand-alone bike plan (along the lines of Seattle’s Bicycle Master Plan); one, Everett, is working on a plan, and four, Auburn, Federal Way, Redmond, and Shoreline, had no plan in place or in the works. Four cities—Everett, Kent, Shoreline, and Tacoma—do not have any dedicated funding to pay for their bike plans.
Tacoma and Bellevue had far and away the most miles of proposed bicycle facilities, with 165 and 164 miles of proposed routes, respectively. The three cities with the fewest miles of proposed bike lanes, with 30 miles each, were Auburn, Kirkland, and Renton.
Half the cities have adopted a “Complete Streets” plan, which requires the city to include bike facilities when it rebuilds or repairs city streets.
Finally, as Cascade notes on its blog, “the cities that responded ‘yes’ to a higher number of [surveyed] categories also tended to have higher percentages of bicycle commuters and lower bicycle crash rates.”
