Bicycling's Top 50

There are many unspectacular but important things a city can do to gain our consideration for this list. Maybe you've heard of them, or maybe—given the pace of change these days—you've already begun to enjoy them: segregated bike lanes, municipal bike racks and bike boulevards, to name a few. If you have those things in your town, cyclists probably have the ear of the local government—another key factor. To make our Top 50, a city must also support a vibrant and diverse bike culture. It must have smart, savvy bike shops. A few notes: We considered only cities with populations of 100,000 or more. We strove for geographical diversity, to avoid having a list dominated by California's many bike-oriented cities. If your town isn't named below—or if it falls on our worst-cities list—then use this as an opportunity to do something about it, like cyclists in Miami did after their city earned a black mark in 2008. And if your city is one of the 50 lauded below? Go out and enjoy a ride.

To prepare this list, we referenced the Bicycling and Walking in the United States 2010 Benchmarking Report, prepared by the Alliance for Biking and Walking; the League of American Bicyclists' Bicycle Friendly America project; data from Mediamark Research, Inc., Dun & Bradstreet and The Nielsen Company; and interviews with national and local advocates, bike shops and other experts.