(PORTLAND, Maine) July 10, 2024 – Gardiner, Fryeburg, Patten, Farmington, and Buckfield ranked in the top 5 in the PeopleForBikes comprehensive assessment based on the quality of their bike networks.
“We know Maine is an incredible place to enjoy by bike, whether that’s for recreation or transportation,” said Jean Sideris, the Bicycle Coalition of Maine (BCM) executive director. “But, we also know there is a lot of work to do to improve bicycle infrastructure and improve safety for people biking in Maine.”
“The BCM is glad to see PeopleForBikes include small cities (<50,000 population) in their rankings for Maine. Several rural cities made the top of the list, including cities in the Northern and Western parts of the state. This demonstrates that good bicycle infrastructure can be done in communities of any size anywhere in Maine.”
PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings is an annual, data-driven program to identify, evaluate, andcompare the best cities and towns for bicycling. Each city receives a City Ratings score on a scale of 0 to 100. Based on data from PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis,high-scoring cities often perform well across six factors captured in the acronym SPRINT: safe speeds, protected bike lanes, reallocated space for biking and walking, intersection treatments,network connections, and trusted data.
Among the Maine top 10, some commonalities in their scoring emerged. Nearly all scored well in both Access to parts of the city where residents live and Access to jobs and schools. Gardiner, Fryeburg, and Patten all scored highest in Access to places that serve basic needs like hospitals and grocery stores. Portland, Bangor, Lewiston, and York Harbor scored highest in Access to recreational amenities like parks and trails. Except for Portland, Lewiston, and Bangor, all of the top ten scored 0 for Access to major transit hubs.
PeopleForBikes sees a score of 50 as a significant threshold to becoming a great place to bike, with investments in bike infrastructure creating more opportunities for people to ride and fostering a groundswell of local support for better biking. Unfortunately, no cities in Maine met that threshold, but the top five were within nine points. Of the cities that were included in the 2023 rankings, 10 received higher scores this year and 3 received lower scores. See below for the full list.
The BCM has worked with communities all across the state to support improved bicycle infrastructure, including advocating for bike lanes, multi-use paths and trails, and bicycle safety education projects. We helped install traffic calming projects in Bangor, Portland, and Lewiston. Our Community Spokes network of local advocates are active in nearly every town on this list, and it is the collective of local advocates and BCM’s statewide efforts that will help bring about changes in bike/pedestrian infrastructure to help improve these scores in future PeopeForBikes analyses.
Rank City Score
1 Gardiner 44
2 Fryeburg 44
3 Patten 44
4 Farmington 41
5 Buckfield 39
6 Portland 39
7 Lewiston 38
8 Bangor 33
9 York Harbor 32
10 Cornish 30
11 Camden 29
12 Presque Isle 29
13 Gorham 27
14 Orono 27
15 Biddeford 27
16 Old Orchard 27
Beach
17 Scarborough 26
18 Augusta 23
19 Kittery 23
20 Saco 19
21 Kennebunk 18
22 Auburn 12
Read the full report here https://cityratings.peopleforbikes.org/
###
The Bicycle Coalition of Maine works to make Maine a better and safer place to bike and walk. Founded in 1992, the Bicycle Coalition of Maine has grown into the leading bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group in the state. The Coalition believes all Mainers should have access to bikes and bike education, and we envision a future where Maine’s roads, public ways, and trails are safe and accessible, resulting in cleaner travel options, improved health, and stronger economic benefits for Maine communities. www.bikemaine.org