America’s Best New Bike Lanes

A survey of new bike infrastructure installed in U.S. cities last year reveals good news for bike advocates. “With more protected bike lanes and low-stress bike networks being built across the country than ever before, we had a tough time picking this past year’s best new bike lanes,” writes Martina Haggerty of PeopleForBikes. Haggerty lists nine outstanding projects.

The top projects include the Marin Boulevard Bikeway connecting Hoboken and Jersey City, where the cities used “quick build” methods to speed up the project’s timeline and provide immediate improvements that can inform long-term planning. In Seattle, the city used repurposed jersey barriers from a bridge repair project to create a new protected bikeway between Green Lake and nearby neighborhoods.

The list commends the efforts of smaller cities such as Bloomington, Indiana and Spartanburg, South Carolina, where an extension of the Mary Black Rail Trail connects urban neighborhoods to a 50-mile trail system. The list also gives a nod to car-free streets in general, many of which began as pandemic-era projects and are now becoming permanent fixtures. See the source article for the full list and photos of the projects.