America’s Top 10 Bike Commuting Cities

by: Justin Gural

When looking at the numbers, health experts have no doubt connected the dots between living a healthy lifestyle and maintaining exercise in your routine. In fact, many of the top-ranked 'fittest' cities happen to share an important characteristic that sheds light on their fit rankings --not only are they active in general, but they're commuting to work on bike.

The American Community Survey (ACS) is an ongoing survey that provides community data every year, which then is used to plan investments and services to determine how federal and state funds are distributed each year.

The survey is an important tool beyond gauging who's fit and who isn't, and the last survey in 2009 revealed less than one (0.6) percent of Americans ride their bikes to work. We have our many theories about this stat, which will be held to another time. According to ACS, the share of bike commuters varies quite a bit across metros, but these are the top 10 metro areas with the largest shares of bike commuters.

1: Eugene, OR

2: Fort Collins-Loveland, CO

3: Missoula, MT

4: Boulder, CO

5: Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta,CA

6: Gainesville, FL

7: Logan, UT

8: Chico, CA

9: Bellingham, WA

10: Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA

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