Another year has passed since the North American based group People For Bikes undertook their last ratings of the bike-friendliness of cities in the US and beyond. As we mentioned last year, Christchurch is in the mix and doing well – but this year, a few new cities from around New Zealand have also joined the fold…
Let’s start first with Christchurch… Last year, our city had a Rating of 58/100, putting it within the top 8% of all cities (even if the definition of “cities” is rather loose, considering how many rated locations don’t even have 10,000 people…). For 2025, Christchurch has now climbed up to a rating of 63, now placing it in the 93rd percentile (i.e top 7%) of rated places and 72nd best of the “large” (>300k population) cities around the world – not bad!
People for Bikes use an interesting methodology for rating cities, using a combination of OpenStreetMap and population data to assess the relative levels of “traffic stress” faced by people biking in each location. The combined “Bicycle Network Analysis” (BNA) scores are then used to determine the overall rating. While it’s a bit hard to discern in detail at the grid-block level, you can see that the best parts of the city for cycling tend to align with areas with good cycling networks and/or lower speed limits.
While the cycle network growth hasn’t been as spectacular in the past year, some of that improvement in scores no doubt reflects the completion of some notable connections. And hopefully the other cycleway sections currently under construction or planned over the coming year will improve those stats even more next year…
If you want to compare how we rank with similar large cities in the rest of the world, we’ve now actually jumped ahead of Portland and Pennsylvania in the US, as well as San Francisco, Leeds, New York and Glasgow. Potentially next in our sights above us could be Madrid (Spain), Calgary (Canada), Manchester (UK), and Dublin (Ireland) – roll on next year…
(By the way, Munich, which I blogged about the other day is currently the 6th best of the large cities in the world with a rating of 85…)
But wait – it’s not just Christchurch flying the flag for NZ now! Three new cities across the country are now also being rated for cycle-friendliness:
- In the Waikato, Hamilton gets a fairly good rating of 58, putting it in the 90th percentile overall and 78th in mid-size (50k to 300k pop.) cities
- Wellington meanwhile gets a rating of 54, putting it in the 88th percentile overall and 97th in the mid-size cities (no doubt helped by some of its impressive cycle network developments of late…)
- And Auckland has a rating of 49, placing it in the 83rd percentile and 127th overall for large cities
Meanwhile across the ditch, the best Australian city continues to be Canberra, with a rating of 56, putting it in the 89th percentile. As you’ll recall, I recently visited Perth, but it doesn’t fare quite so well in the City Ratings, with a score of just 36/100 – perhaps not surprising given my assessment of its cycling facilities.
It’s great to see our fair city being acknowledged on an international level for an ever-improving provision for cycling. And it’s also great to see a few more NZ cities also being considered now too…
What do you think of the City Ratings for NZ’s cities?