JACKSON, Wyo. — Jackson’s beloved bike path system has received a rating of 80 out of 100 from PeopleForBikes in an annual review of bikeable cities worldwide.
PeopleForBikes, a national bike advocacy organization and trade group based in Boulder, Colorado, released its 2025 City Ratings, which measure the quality and connectedness of a city’s bike network. The City Ratings are released every summer based on results from PeopleForBike’s Bicycle Network Analysis.
Jackson’s Network Score of 80 put it in the 98th percentile across the globe. Out of 2,901 cities, Jackson ranks 49th worldwide, 19th in the Mountain West and first in Wyoming. The average Network Score from City Ratings for all cities in 2025 was 30 out of 100.
According to PeopleForBikes website, “A bike network is a connected system of protected bike lanes, off-street paths, slow shared streets and safe crossings that enables people to comfortably bike around a city.”
Sam Petri, communications and advocacy director at Friends of Pathways (FOP), told Buckrail the rating system is imperfect, but still good and improving. City Ratings gathers data from Open Street Maps, an open source technology, and if streets are not tagged correctly on Open Street Maps, then that can affect a city’s score. Petri and his colleagues at FOP have spent time labeling the streets of Jackson in Open Street Maps in order to accurately reflect the town’s bike network.
“[The pathway through town] and on Willow Street connects a rec center, an elementary school, sports fields, restaurants and retail, the Greenspace, town and county buildings … affordable housing, bus stops, a library, national forest trailheads,” Petri said. “All of that is because of the work that [Town of Jackson Pathways Coordinator] Brian Schilling has done. … Also because our community puts a high value on cycling and walking.”
The Network Score is an average of six scores that focus specifically on the quality of access to various services and places. Each City Rating only applies to the bike systems that are within a town’s limits. Below is a breakdown of how Jackson scored in the six categories:
- 90 in People: Access to parts of the city where residents live
- 72 in Opportunity: Access to jobs and schools
- 72 in Core Services: Access to places that serve basic needs like hospitals and grocery stores
- 86 in Recreation: Access to recreational amenities like parks and trails
- 81 in Retail: Access to major shopping centers
- 81 in Transit: Access to major transit hubs
“It is a high score but there are still lots of improvements that can be made to make it safer and more inviting to walkers and bikers,” Petri said. “You want to make things safe for all ages and abilities; that is the key to pathways.”
Other noteworthy scores in the West include Crested Butte, Colorado, with a score of 87; Havre, Montana, with a score of 82; and Hailey, Idaho, with a score of 77.
