How Bikeable is L.A.? Barely, Says 'Bike Score' Survey

This article was reported and written by Saul Daniels:

A national survey of America's most bikeable cities has been released by Bike Score, and Los Angeles is graded 54 out of 100. With that rating, Los Angeles ranks as just barely bikeable. 

"It has taken Los Angeles 100 years to become the car-centric city it is today and that's not going to change overnight," Glenn Bailey, vice-chair of Los Angeles's Bicycle Advisory Committee, tells Patch. "But in a city where most trips are three miles or less, accommodating and encouraging bicycle usage makes a lot of sense."  

Bailey said the city has plans that will move the Bike Score higher in future ratings. "We need more bike lanes on major streets, bicycle paths along the public right of ways, and convenient and secure bicycle parking," he said. "We need to better educate drivers and cyclists on their shared rights and responsibilities while on the road. We need to encourage children to walk and bicycle to school. In short, we need to do even more to implement the City's adopted 2010 Bicycle Plan." 

In North Hollywood, this once again brings back the topic of bike lanes. There's talks to bring bike lanes to the NoHo Arts District. Do you think this score makes it clearer that the community is in need of them?

Bike Week L.A. encourages Angelenos to self-propel with activities organized by Metro and other transit organizations. Bike Score is an expanded service of the Walk Score website with rates the walkability of addresses around the United States. It quantifies what makes one place less car-dependent than another. The site also offers Transit Score to rate mass transit access.

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The site was developed at the University of British Columbia, under a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, to measure the bike-friendliness of a city by considering these factors: 

Bike Score provides a 0-100 rating of the bikeability of a location based on the availability of bike infrastructure (lanes and trails), the hilliness of the area, amenities and road connectivity, and the number of bike commuters. The Bike Score for a city is then calculated by applying the Bike Score algorithm block-by-block throughout the city and weighting the scores by population density. Cities with scores of 70 or higher are considered to be very bikeable, cities with scores between 50 and 69 are bikeable, and cities with scores below 50 are somewhat bikeable. 

Top 10 Bike Scores 

City, State * Bike Score * Population   

Cambridge MA * 91.5 * 105,162   
Davis CA * 89.4 * 65,622   
Berkeley CA * 87.7 * 112,580   
Boulder CO * 86.4 * 97,385   
Santa Monica CA * 82.5 * 89,736   
Minneapolis MN * 78.5 * 382,578   
Fort Collins CO * 78.3 * 143,986   
Iowa City IA * 77.1 * 67,862   
Hoboken NJ * 76.4 * 50,005   
Ann Arbor MI * 76.3 * 113,934