A tiny Michigan town has the best bicycle network in the world while Brooklyn, New York, unseated Minneapolis, Minnesota, as tops among the largest cities, according to a leading advocacy organization's scorecard.

PeopleForBikes City Ratings measure the quality of biking in almost 3,000 in the U.S. and beyond and aim to “provide key lessons and best practices, local leaders, advocates, and everyday riders to build more great places to ride in their communities.”

Among the 2,945 places mapped within City Ratings, Mackinac Island, Michigan (pop. 663) ranked first overall. No surprise considering motorized vehicles are prohibited on the 4.35-square mile island in Lake Huron between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of the Wolverine State. Brooklyn, New York, tops the list among large cities, knocking off last year’s No. 1, Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s the first perfect score in City Ratings history. The report also notes “2025 Cities on the Rise” that made improvements in their City Ratings scores in recent years as well as “Top New Cities for Biking.”

The PeopleForBikes’ Great Bike Infrastructure Project provides a list of 2,193 projects around the country, sortable by city and state, including the type of project and its status, with links for more information.

City Ratings measures the quality of a city’s bike network of protected bike lanes, off-street paths, slow shared streets, and safe crossings that enable people to bike comfortably.

Scores are released annually each summer based on results from our Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) data analysis software that measures the quality and connectivity of a city's bike network. The BNA assesses six factors captured in the acronym SPRINT:

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• - Safe speeds
• - Protected bike lanes
• - Reallocated space
• - Intersection improvements
• - Network connections
• - Trusted data

Intercity rail travel out of Chicago has outpaced other regions in the U.S. the past year and is projected to grow 10 percent over the next two years. But Chicago lacks capacity to meet this demand. Slower growth is expected from 2028 to 2030 because of lack of peak-period seats and service additions, according to Growth Spurt: The Outlook for Chicago’s Intercity Rail Traffic Through 2030, a new report by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University.

Chicago Hub ridership is on pace to return to 2019 levels by late 2026 thanks to the addition of new trains like the new Borealis service launched in May 2024 between Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota with funding from Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin; rising Amtrak demand; and past station and track investments.

State-supported rail based in Chicago saw 1.9 million passengers from October 2024 through June 2025, an increase of 8 percent over the same period in the previous federal fiscal year. That growth outpaces other regional passenger rail hubs in North Carolina-Virginia (7.5 percent), California (3.6 percent) and upstate New York-Vermont (0.2 percent). All state-supported lines grew 3.1 percent. Even without the new Borealis service, the Chicago hub saw 4.1 percent growth, the report noted.

The full report can be found here: Chicago Hub Outlook Report.pdf
 

Shared micromobility trips across North America set a record for the second consecutive year, up 31 percent and eclipsing 225 million in 2024.

The figures come from the sixth annual Shared Micromobility State of the Industry Report for North America, released this month by the Portland, Maine-based North American Bikeshare and Scootershare Association (NABSA).

Electrification continues to proliferate across systems. Last year, 79 percent of shared micromobility systems included e-devices, and 66 percent of shared micromobility trips were on e-devices. E-bike trips reached an all-time high at 64 million trips, while e-scooter trips continued to rise reaching 85 million trips.

In 2024, 415 cities across North America had one or more shared micromobility systems. The total shared micromobility vehicles deployed across North America increased 19 percent from 2023 to 333,000. The previous report tabulated 172 million trips across an estimated 421 cities.

Some 74 percent of riders say that they use shared micromobility to connect to transit. More than a third of shared micromobility trips (35 percent) are used to replace car trips, according to the report.

This year’s report includes effective micromobility parking management strategies deployed by agencies and operators, as well as a breakdown of public agency funding and staff time support for micromobility.

The complete 22-page report can be accessed here.
 

A seven-second head start for pedestrians crossing the street reduced injuries in New York City (NYC) by a third, according to a study of more than 6,000 intersections.

Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPIs) give pedestrians several seconds to begin crossing before vehicles get a green light. Typically, these intervals are between 7 and 11 seconds depending on the size of an intersection.

The reduction in pedestrian injuries was consistent across all intersection types. The most pronounced impact was seen during the daytime. Fatal pedestrian crashes dropped 65 percent during daylight hours, according to researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Findings from the study, Effectiveness of leading pedestrian intervals for city walkers’ safety, were published in Nature Cities.

Researchers evaluated intersection-level injury risk from 2013 to 2018 using a spatial ecological panel design. It used precise geographic data from NYC Open Data and the city’s Vision Zero initiative. There were 2,869 LPI treatments installed at intersections studied. It is the largest dataset to date evaluating LPI effectiveness.

“Most pedestrian-vehicle crashes happen near the curb, where drivers are less likely to see people crossing,” lead author Christopher Morrison, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, said.

“LPIs are one of the most affordable and scalable traffic safety interventions. A 7-second delay for drivers can mean the difference between life and death for pedestrians. Our findings show they work—and could be adopted more widely.”
 

Walking and biking accounts for less than 10 percent of trips in more than two-thirds of U.S. counties, according to a new report.

The Transportation Mode Share Report by StreetLight Data ranks counties in the continental U.S. for active transportation by the share of trips taken in 2023. “By focusing on mode share, rather than total trip volumes,” StreetLight highlights “how meaningful a role walking and biking are playing in daily travel patterns, as compared to vehicle trips taken.”

Not suprisingly, four of New York City's five counties, known as boroughs, top the list (New York, Bronx, Kings, and Queens), followed by Hudson County, New Jersey, directly across the river from Manhattan, at No. 5.

The average mode share among all counties with population density of at least 150 people per square mile is about 9.5 percent. Nine of the top 10 counties have population densities of at least 4,000 people per square mile.

Outside of the East Coast, eight counties ranked among the top 30:
 

• -- San Francisco, California (7)
• -- Champaign, Illinois (19)
• -- Santa Cruz, California (21)
• -- Boulder, Colorado (25)
• -- Alameda, California (26)
• -- Yolo, California (27)
• -- Monroe, Indiana (28)
• -- Orange, California (29)

More than three-quarters of counties see biking account for less than 1 percent of trips and no county sees more than 12 percent of trips via bike.

StreetLight Data, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the engineering firm, Jacobs. The complete 19-page report is available here.
 

Density and street design are the strongest predictors of high walking and biking rates, with a recent study suggesting that if every city expanded its bike lane network and redesigned streets to match Copenhagen, Denmark, private vehicle emissions could be cut by 6 percent and generate $435 million in health benefits.

Researchers from UCLA analyzed data from 11,587 cities across 121 countries for “Global health and climate benefits from walking and cycling infrastructure,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study found that weather had no discernable impact on active travel. Some of the highest rates of active travel are found in the snow of Montreal and Copenhagen, and in the heat and humidity of Kolkata, India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh. “The lesson is clear: You don’t need to replicate Copenhagen to make your city walkable and bike-friendly,” Adam Millard-Ball, lead author and director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, said.

The study employed data from Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE), which uses aggregated and anonymized location history data from opted-in users. EIE allowed researchers to identify the number and mode of trips, along with distance traveled by each mode within a given city.

The research team released a companion playbook for city leaders and transportation planners, which provides data-driven recomendations, paired with case studies from eight successful cities. Among the case studies is Hoboken, New Jersey, is among the case studies, including the Hoboken Complete Streets Design Guide, part of the NJTPA’s Planning for Emerging Centers Program in 2019.
 

Ridership along protected bike lanes (PBL) is 80 percent higher than along standard bike lanes and more than four times higher than roads without bicycle facilities.

“The link between low-stress bicycle facilities and bicycle commuting,” published this month in the journal, Nature Cities, compared how newer facility types fare relative to standard bike lanes. “While surveys have shown that potential riders’ stated preferences are for lower-stress bicycle facilities such as PBLs, few studies have explored whether that preference translates to ridership.”

Researchers used six years of data (2014-19) across more than 14,000 block groups (a subdivision of a Census tract) in 28 U.S. cities.

Protected bicycle lanes experienced bicycle commuter increases vastly higher than other types of bicycle facilities:

• -- 1.8 times larger than standard bicycle lane block groups;
• -- 1.6 times larger than shared-lane marking block groups, and
• -- 4.3 times larger than block groups that did not install bicycle facilities.

Protected lane mileage installed was associated with increases in bicycle commuting of 52.5 percent more than standard bicycle lane mileage, and 281.2 percent stronger than shared-lane marking mileage.

A PBL is physically separated from motor vehicle traffic by a parking lane or some type of barrier. A standard bike lane is a portion of a street designated by pavement markings or signs for use by cyclists.
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Transit agencies delivered 7.7 billion passenger trips in the United States last year, 491 million more – almost 7 percent – than 2023 and reaching 85 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

The data come from the 75^th edition of the Public Transportation Fact Book and its latest Ridership Policy Brief, published by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

Ridership had fallen to 20 percent in April 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. National public transit ridership has increased 25 percent since 2022.

Demand response services, such as microtransit and vanpools, have recovered to 93 percent – the highest of any mode. The rebound is more pronounced in cities with populations of less than 100,000, which are at 88 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Bus ridership has shown a strong resurgence since riders tend to be younger and work in service industry jobs that require in-person attendance, according to the report. Ridership is back to 86 percent of 2019 levels, leading all fixed-route modes, while rail has recovered to 72 percent, with continued growth expected.

Among other highlights of the report: Transit agencies provided 4.27 billion vehicle revenue miles of service in 2022, an increase from 2021, and the number of rail systems grew by 62 percent to 99.
 

Universal level boarding and electrification could reduce dead time at each train stop, adding up to time savings across intercity as well as commuter rail lines that rival driving or air travel.

The 79-page report, Momentum, comes from the New York University’s Marron Institute for Urban Management and the Transit Costs Project. “Adopting universal high-level platforms and level boarding across a route – or an entire network – allows railroads to optimize their passenger car designs to further speed up boarding and disembarking and further improve accessibility.”

Author Nolan Hicks described the plan as “a very powerful medium-term option that should be considered as we think about how to make rail a viable, critical part of how we get around America.” Routes of up to 300 miles -- basically all commuter lines -- are good candidates for the plan, he added.

The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is the busiest corridor in the U.S. and is wildly successful though not true high-speed rail (HSR). Trains reach typical speeds of 90 to 130 MPH with a maximum of 155 MPH. Two crucial differences between the corridor and elsewhere are electric service, which can accelerate faster than diesel trains, and level boarding via high platforms, reducing the time for boarding.

The report offers several case studies, particularly looking at service around New York City, from as far west as Buffalo to the the eastern end of Long Island. around the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, . It also and lays out different modeling costs and reforms and recommendations to advance the program.

Hicks recently appeared on a webinar hosted by the High Speed Rail Alliance which can be viewed here.
 

Remote work has dispersed economic activity away from city centers, according to researchers who dubbed the phenomenon, the "Donut Effect."

“How working from home reshapes cities,” published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), estimated that about three-fifths of households that left large cities moved to the suburbs of the same city thanks to hybrid work and Work From Home (WFH) schedules. Of the remaining 42 percent who relocated to other areas entirely, 29 percent went to smaller cities, 9 percent went to other large cities, and 4 percent to rural areas.

The “Donut Effect” is limited to large cities and is “larger and more persistent” in cities with high levels of remote work. Authors suggest that the Donut Effect may have varying impacts on cities, such as:

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• -- Shifting the tax base from cities to surrounding areas, which could strain large cities’ public finances;
• -- A decline in public transportation usage, which may raise concerns about the solvency of mass transit systems;
• -- Large reductions in office valuations due to a drop in demand that could strain real estate firms and financing banks;
• -- Rezoning office space into mixed use to attract residents back to city centers which could cities more livable;
• -- Declining commute times and peak-hour traffic; and,
• -- Employees moving to less dense suburbs with larger homes and suburban amenities.

“Altogether, the net welfare effects of the Donut Effect are still ambiguous and will depend on how society continues to respond.”
 

Rail moves freight more efficiently than trucks, reduces traffic congestion by removing trucks from highways, and contributes some $233 billion in economic output, according to a report compiled by a rail advocacy organization.

The Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Railroads (AAR) released Rail Transportation and the U.S. Economy: Fueling Growth, Trade, and Opportunity, a 35-page report detailing the impact across the economy.

The report estimated that freight rail contributed:
-- $233.4 billion in total economic output.
-- 153,000 direct rail jobs with 749,000 total jobs supported nationwide.
-- $66 billion in total household income.
-- $25.1 billion in annual tax revenues on the federal, state, and local level.

The top five states for freight rail employment are Texas, Illinois, Nebraska, California, and Georgia, accounting for 34 percent of all freight rail jobs in the U.S.

AAR estimated that some 38 percent of rail traffic in 2023 was tied directly to international trade-related shipments, accounting for 543.5 million tons of goods moved through U.S. ports and across borders.

The complete report can be found here.
 

Users overwhelmingly choose ride hail services over transit to save time even when their destinations are served by transit, according to a study of Chicago area commuters.

Shorter wait times, closer stops, and a more efficient service could boost transit’s potential, according to researchers at the University of Michigan, but developing policies requires more robust data.

The study investigated other factors that could impact riders’ choices, such as pollution, traffic, and collision risk. Researchers found that charging users for these social harms would only slightly increase the value people have to place on their time to still choose ride hails over transit, bumping the value from $34 per hour, close to the city’s average hourly wage, to $37.

“If you were to tax riders based on how much harm they cause, it’s not clear they would behave any differently,” Parth Vaishnav, one of the researchers from the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, said.

Read more about the study here.
 

Major bus lines expanded along the country’s busiest corridors, upgrading to technologically advanced coaches, and prioritizing densely traveled routes in the Northeast and warm weather regions.

Those are some takeaways from Stepping Up Service, the 2025 Outlook for the Intercity Bus Industry in the United States by DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development.

Expansion in the Sun Belt and Southwest propelled intercity bus ridership and several state bus systems also set ridership records, according to the report, which predicts bus ridership will grow 4 percent this year. That’s more than the 2.4 to 2.8 percent growth of domestic auto and air travel projected by the U.S. Travel Association.

State-supported bus networks, less vulnerable to impending “fiscal cliff” than public transit systems, will see more expansion and service additions, according to the report. The share of bus trips of less than 300 miles will grow due to competition from private vehicles, air travel, car rentals, and concerns about the unpredictability of longer bus trips.

The report breaks down developments across seven regions: New England and New York; Mid-Atlantic; South; Midwest; Texas and South Central; Mountain Region; California and Nevada; and, Pacific Northwest.

The previous report, released in February 2024, suggested that intercity bus traffic could recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2026.
 

A study of more than 50,000 Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations may help determine where to develop charging infrastructure and peak demand times.

Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability and Center for Disaster Resilience analyzed real-time data from 54,000 publicly available stations. Preliminary findings were presented in December at the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis.

The study used individual charging port statuses recorded every 10 minutes at 54,000 stations in three power grid zones: California, Texas, and the Northeast. The first round of data for August 2023 revealed working-hour patterns in all three zones.

In California, about 45 percent of stations showed a working-hours charging pattern from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. with peak utilization reaching 80 percent of charging capacity. About 30 percent of stations in Texas showed a similar workday pattern between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. with peak use averaging 60 percent of capacity. In the Northeast, which comprised six states, 28 percent of stations demonstrated a working-hour pattern of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with peak utilization of 55 percent.

Variation in charging behavior between zones may be due to:

• - Differences in the price of electricity;
• - Availability of public charging stations to EV owners; and,
• - Incentive programs that may encourage owners to charge during off-peak hours.

Right Turn On Red (RTOR) movements are generally unsafe for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers while only “marginally beneficial” in lowering emissions and only under certain contexts, according to a new study.

Right Turn on Red: Energy-Saving Measure or Unsafe Maneuver?, published in December by the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San Jose University, reviewed data from California right-turn collisions at signalized intersections between 2011 and 2022.

The highest numbers of right-turn collisions for pedestrians and cyclists were located near transit stops and in commercial zones with large parking lots and relatively heavy cross-traffic, according to a case study analysis of Los Angeles intersections. Several had “irregular” designs that could add to driver distraction or confusion. MIT recommended that California allow cities to elect to ban RTOR as the default and then indicate intersections where it would be permitted.

Marginal emission reduction benefits associated with RTOR have declined over the years with improved fuel economy and will likely further decline with increasing adoption of electric vehicles, according to the study. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 required states to permit right turns on red lights as an energy-saving measure to receive federal assistance for mandated conservation programs. New York City has long banned right turn on red unless explicitly noted in signage and in recent years, other cities have considered a ban, including Washington, D.C.

The complete 49-page report and research brief are both available via the Mineta Transportation Institute.