Jude Tibbetts, 13, of Farmington rides his bike recently at The Dragon’s Nest skateboard park in Farmington. Donna M. Perry/Sun Journal

PORTLAND — Gardiner, Fryeburg, Patten, Farmington, and Buckfield ranked in the top five 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 executive director, according to a news release from the coalition. “But, we also know there is a lot of work to do to improve bicycle infrastructure and improve safety for people biking in Maine.”

PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings is an annual, data-driven program to identify, evaluate, and compare 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 10 scored 0 for access to major transit hubs.

Read the full report at cityratings.peopleforbikes.org.

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