Bicycle Friendly State program
The Bicycle Friendly State℠ program is designed to promote best practices for state-level bicycling-related policies and programs — the program relies upon dedicated state Department of Transportation professionals to provide an understanding of where each state stands relative to best practices and where each state can improve.
You can find an explanation of the data found on each report card here.
About the Program
Between 2008 and 2015 the League of American Bicyclists created an annual ranking of all 50 states based upon policies, programs, and other public agency efforts to create great bicycling in each state. Beginning in 2016 we instituted changes to the Bicycle Friendly State (BFS℠) program to make it easier for agency staff to participate and make it easier for the public to connect with the recommendations of the program. Those changes included:
- Making the survey for the Bicycle Friendly State program an every other year survey,
- Decreasing the survey size,
- Answering about 40% of survey questions using public data compiled by the League,
- Publishing a Report Card and ranking in the year of the BFS survey, and
- Designating 5 Bicycle Friendly Actions that the League believes every state should take to minimally address bicyclist safety and bicycling conditions.
The Bicycle Friendly State program relies on the cooperation of staff at each state's Department of Transportation, who provide a wealth of information by completing our Bicycle Friendly State (BFS℠) survey.
Over time, the BFS rankings show that there are fantastic efforts to emulate and that there is still a lot of work to be done to improve conditions for bicycling in states – from the bottom to the top of the BFS ranking. States that consistently work to promote bicycling and improve conditions can expect to improve their scores. You can find historical data on state rankings here.
For states that are interested in or planning to take any of our 5 Bicycle Friendly Actions, we aim to support those efforts through white papers that discuss taking each action and communications support for our member groups or agencies who want to engage our constituents around an action.