Update June 26, 2024: I received word last evening that my city is trying to artificially boost its PeopleForBikes score by encouraging Google to include bike lanes that don’t meet standards for safe access for all. Please do not try to greenwash your city this way. It is not only misleading, it is potentially deadly as it implies a safety that does not exist. See rest of comment at the end of this post.
The PeopleForBikes 2024 City Ratings were released this morning. My Metro Atlanta City clocks in at a dismal 16 out of 100 (up 2 points from last year, so that’s progress). 45th place — not in the country, but in the State of Georgia. See how your city (or cities where you are considering relocating or visiting) did. (Note: I have learned through my years of experiential research and hands-on advocacy that any city that is not currently bike friendly when the rubber hits the road — despite the plans on the shelves that win awards — doesn’t actually want to be. I do continue to ask for cones.)
For fun, I clicked on the city ratings for all the places I rode during my five-month/10,000-mile journey Round America with a Duck solo-female journey via bike, buses, trains and working on organic farms from coast to coast. My hands-down number 1 favorite city for riding my bike during that adventure is not listed but should be. Read my book to find out where. Below are the other places (in order of where the fell on my journey). See TikToks tagged #RoundAmericaWithADuck to view scenes from bike rides (and much more) all over the USA.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 36
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 58
New York, New York (I rode in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn) 56
Joplin, Missouri 25
Wichita, Kansas 10
Boulder, Colorado 70
Denver, Colorado 46
Salt Lake City, Utah 52
Provo, Utah 38
Los Angeles, California 25
Culver City, California 30
Santa Monica, California 61
New Orleans, Louisiana 25
Note: Some other cities, small towns and rural areas where I rode during the journey are not listed. I’ve also ridden in many other cities prior to my journey. I am a League of American Bicyclists Cycling Instructor and both a former PeopleForBikes Ambassador and the first Metro Atlanta Bicycle Mayor as part of a global consortium with the Amsterdam-based social entreprise BYCS. My chief form of bike advocacy (and the one that I believe matters most) is simply (although it’s not simple) existing in public space as an aging woman on a bike. More impact comes from that act (even if it’s just girls in the back of SUVs seeing me as an example of what’s possible) than any meeting at city hall I ever attended.
UPDATE: June 26
Email I just sent to City Hall:
Councilor Seconder sent me a series of emails last evening indicating that he has asked city staff to contact Google Open Streets to add the listing of bike lanes that don’t meet standards for safe access for all in order to artificially boost Dunwoody’s dismal PeopleForBikes city rating. This information is misleading and potential deadly when provided to people who may assume a safety on those bike lanes that does not exist (almost none of the bike lanes in Dunwoody meet standards for safe access for all). See this 54-second video about what it looks like to ride a bike in Dunwoody. (Public Works Director Michael Smith has even used one of my videos at a national conference, by the way, to show the dangers.)
Fun fact: I have ridden my bike in bike lanes all over the USA and I only use a 3-foot pool noodle when riding my bike in the City of Dunwoody. There is an almost-100% reduction in illegal passing when I use it. Even that, however, does not provide protection against a distracted or impaired driver or one who intends harm (the four-year anniversary of the crimes against me is July 13).
I refuse to ride my bike in the similarly dangerous-by-design bike lanes in some other nearby cities such as Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Brookhaven, and more. You will note their PeopleForBikes scores are similarly in the toilet as ours. If you have not ridden your bike in the City of Atlanta, please do so, including the bike lanes on 14th Street and Edgewood which are both newly protected with bollards even though they don’t have buffers.
I look forward to updates about the pop-up protected bike lane in Dunwoody that has been promised. I can help with it prior to September 1 as I will be then out of the country for most of the fall working on the sequel to my new book, Round America with a Duck. (You may find my book, Traveling at the Speed of Bike, helpful as there are three chapters specifically about riding a bike in Dunwoody. I provided one to Councilor Lambert years ago.)
I strongly suggest that instead of greenwashing the Google information available to the public, the city make actual changes that meet safe access for all standards.
Trust the journey,
Pattie
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 