Saturday, July 06, 2024

The Car Free Cities Atlas

map of New York showing where people have access to car-free spaces

The cyclists of Helsinki have the best access to protected bike lanes of any citizens in the world. 94% of people in the city live within 300m of a protected bikeway. This means that Helsinki scores number one out of the 1095 cities ranked in the Atlas of Sustainable City Transport.

The new Atlas of Sustainable City Transport ranks and maps cities around the world based on how easy residents can access public transit, protected bike lanes and car-free places. The map allows you to explore the sustainable transport options in over 1,000 cities around the world.

The Atlas provides a global data dashboard that shows how cities are performing in terms of sustainable transportation by tracking nine indicators. These indicators focus on factors such as how close people live to sustainable transportation options like bike lanes and public transit and how many people have access to essential services without needing a car.

Using the map it is possible to select from 1095 cities around the world and explore how each individual city performs under each of the nine sustainable city transport indicators. The map also provides a ranking for each city under each of the nine indicators allowing you to see which cities around the world have the best and worst sustainable transport options.

The residents of Minneapolis have the best access to protected bike lanes in the United States. In Minneapolis 40% of people live within 300m of a protected bikeway. It is a long way short of the 94% in Helsinki but is way better than the situation facing the residents of Bakersfield, Louisville and the five other U.S. cities where 0 citizens live within 300m of a protected bikeway.

24 cities in the United States have no rapid transit infrastructure. The best performing city in terms of access to rapid transit is New York, where 43% of residents 'live within 1km of high-capacity public transport running on a dedicated right-of-way.' Even that doesn't quite live up to Leipzig, where 75% of residents live within 1km of public transport.

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