Chicago’s ‘bikeability’ is behind the curve in recent cycling studies…

Chicago has work to do to make its city streets more friendly to cyclists, according to two recent studies of how accessible cities are by bike.

One of the studies ranked 50 U.S. cities by their “bikeability” and put Chicago in the middle of the pack.

Chicago ranked 20th in the report published last month by Clever, a real estate website. Minneapolis came in first place, followed by Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. The least bike-friendly city was Memphis, Tennessee.

The metrics Clever used to rank the cities included how “bikeable” the metro area is based on Walk Score’s bike score, the ratio of bike trails, bike shops, bike rental shops and bike shares per 100,000 residents; how many cyclists were involved in fatal car crashes in 2021 and the percentage of bike commuters.

“Chicago is better than average for large U.S. cities when it comes to bike friendliness,” said John Greenfield, co-founder of My Streetsblog Chicago. “We have a lot…