In Austin, Texas, a more than 400-mile bike network is being built in record time. As of September of this year, 215 miles of the all ages and abilities network are complete, connecting protected bike lanes, neighborhood bikeways and urban trails. Impressively, the Texas capital has been able to cut down the time on its network buildout by a whopping two-thirds, building more than 100 miles in the last two years alone. Watch to learn more about how Austin achieved such an impressive milestone.

In 2018, New Orleans didn’t even have a bike plan. Today, the city has committed to building 75 new bike miles by the end of 2021. What New Orleans has been able to accomplish in the last three years is impressive, tripling the pace of its network buildout with an emphasis on network and transit connectivity. Particularly noteworthy is the work that’s been done in the west bank neighborhood of Algiers, where 11 new bike miles were implemented along with the repaving of roadways, new transit stops, and pedestrian crosswalks.

Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the northern tip of Cape Cod, scored high in our U.S. City Ratings program. With a population of just under 3,000 people and five bike shops, development is dense in Provincetown and no highways bisect it—getting from one end of town to the other is about a seven-minute bike ride. Although small, Provincetown offers some big lessons when it comes to bicycling.

Berkeley, California, a university town with roughly 121,000 people, is a true, 15-minute city, with most essential services within walking or biking distance. But Berkeley didn’t become a great place to bicycle overnight. To learn more about Berkeley’s evolution, as well as the ways in which the city has garnered political willpower and reimagined traffic enforcement to make biking more inclusive, we spoke with Mayor Jesse Arreguín.

For decades, protected bike lanes were a missing tool in the American toolbox. That changed in 2007, when New York City began building protected bike lanes at a rapid pace, helping jumpstart a wave of U.S. innovation. Today, 480 miles of protected bike lanes contribute to the 1,200-mile network used by more than 800,000 residents on a regular basis. Prioritizing connections, building out bike share, and making space for everyone are key components of New York City’s success.

The Canadian city of Montreal has a long history of activism for bicycle infrastructure. In fact, it was among the first Canadian cities to install bicycle lanes and today, there are more than 1,000 kilometers of bike lanes in the greater Montreal area, roughly 40% of which are segregated from cars. Over the years, Montreal has consistently updated and expanded its network, prioritizing bicycling in all seasons and normalizing it as an everyday mode of transportation.

San Luis Obispo earned top place in our 2020 City Ratings program, beating out more than 500 other U.S. cities. It was immediately clear that San Luis Obispo’s success in bicycling didn’t happen overnight. A consistent dedication to investing in their bike network over the last 20 years provided the foundation for bicycling to grow.

Between 2005 and 2010, the city of Sevilla, Spain created a 120 kilometer network of protected bike lanes -  removing 5,000 parking spaces along the way. Sevilla’s efforts resulted in a cycling network that forever changed the landscape of the city, and came at a fiscal bargain for city leaders.

Today’s bike-friendly Copenhagen is the product of more than 50 years of dedicated investment and hard work, a far cry from the city famous for its cars and traffic jams in the 1960’s. The city became quieter and cleaner, even as it added residents and jobs. Today, more than half of people in Copenhagen commute by bike daily.

Today, more than 17,000 people ride their bikes regularly to work in Washington, DC, more than three times the number of people riding compared to 2007. In 2010, the American capitol piloted the country’s first modern bikeshare program and started building an ambitious network of protected bike lanes.