Portland Second-Most Bikeable City for Commuters

The Seattle-based company Walk Score provides online services for renters and home buyers to determine which neighborhoods are most walkable in cities across the U.S.

Walk Score released its first Bike Score, and rated Portland the second-best city in the nation for bicycle commuters. According to a report in The Oregonian, the bike scores were determined using a block-by-block algorithm that calculates availability of bike lanes, hilliness, road connectivity, nearby amenities, and the percent of people in that area who bike to work.

The article noted that bicycle commuting climbed by more than 6 percent in Portland in 2011. Depending on the source and the time of year, between 5 percent and 8 percent of the city’s commuters travel by bicycle daily.

Walk score also recently released its first Transit Score, which showed Portland as the tenth-best city for living near train or bus service.

More details about walkability, bike scores, and transit scores are available on the Walk Score rankings page.