Houston Works to Be a Bicycle Friendly City

In Houston, Texas many residents and visitors have turned to bicycles to commute to school and work and explore the city and nearby areas. In some cases, bicyclists travel this way because they understand that automobiles and traffic congestion can increase the heat dome effect and air pollution. It also doesn’t hurt to enjoy a cool breeze as they travel along the city’s many bike lanes and trails.

Houston still has a long way to go. It falls behind other major nationwide bicycle-friendly cities like Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, Salt Lake and Seattle. Residents and visitors who want more bicycling options also face new obstacles.

Yet, there are positive signs of more bicycle traffic options coming in the future.

Houston Already Ranks High

Although Houston doesn’t rank as high as Portland, Seattle or even Austin, with the latter acknowledged as a Gold Level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists, it has received accolades for improvements in recent years. In 2013, it received the Bronze Level Bicycle Friendly Community Award. And, as seen in a 2022 Anytime Estimate report, it ranked 29th on a list of the most bike-friendly cities nationwide. Austin ranked 16th on the same list.

Anytime Estimate used data from diverse sources, such as the United States Census Bureau, Department of Transportation, National Centers for Environmental Information, Google Trends, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Vision Zero Network, Walk Score and Yelp.

The service evaluated a wide range of factors, including the online bicycle-related search trends for the city, the ease of movement by bicycle across the city, the percentage of workers using bicycles to commute, the number of shops for repairs and rental services, bike share docking stations and trailers per 100,000 people, commitment to safety, and the number of days of precipitation and unsafe air quality.

What Obstacles Stand in the Way?

Yet People for Bikes ranks Houston low at 1,866 out of 2,579 cities and only 147 in Texas. As a result, it’s impossible to talk about Houston’s progress without first mentioning the history of past and recent changes that worry some bicycle advocates.

Houston’s overreaching infrastructure has always supported automobiles more than any other form of transportation, which has resulted in the city experiencing more related traffic fatalities than Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia. In 2018, the City of Houston approved $1.1 million in funds for bike and intersection improvements based on short-term retrofits of the existing pavements and associated infrastructure over five years.

Former Mayor Sylvester Turner partnered with the Vision Zero Network in 2020 to make massive changes to streets to reduce car lanes, add new sidewalks, widen existing sidewalks and offer bike lanes and additional transit services to improve mobility and safety for people from all walks of life. These changes started to improve the road safety of vulnerable users and reduce bicycle collision injuries and fatalities.

Houston’s new 74-year-old mayor, John H. Whitmire, who assumed office in January 2024, halted and even reversed many of these pedestrian and bicycle-friendly projects to focus more on automobile mobility. Whitmire has publicly expressed that he feels that many of Turner’s changes created traffic congestion, interfered with emergency services, and harmed businesses.

He has insisted he can reach Vision Zero standards this year, instead of by Turner’s 2030 estimated deadline, by increasing car lanes and removing bike lanes and extra-wide pedestrian walkways. There were 32 injury causing cycling accidents in the city in 2022, so there is still work to be done to reach Vision Zero in the coming years.

How Is Houston Moving Ahead?

Representatives of various entities and organizations have continued to attempt to move forward with plans to improve safety and prosperity for everyone within the city and nearby areas to make Houston one of the most bicycle-friendly metros in the nation. One non-profit organization, BikeHouston, remains diligent with its promotion of the idea. It has continued to challenge driving culture and expand on its original April 2018 Build 50 Challenge campaign, an attempt to build more than 50 miles of biking paths and trails in a year and achieve Gold Level Bicycle Friendly status by 2027.

Diverse mobility and transportation advocates have continued to fundraise and promote awareness about how bicycles and other non-automobile traffic can make Houston safer and create a much better economy driven by more than automobile traffic. They’ve also emphasized how pausing bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects costs regional taxpayers more money.

Where Are the Best Bike Paths and Trails?

Obstacles aside, H-Town boasts amazing bicycling paths and trails in several areas. Residents and visitors who remain alert to potential automobile and other threats and follow local, state and federal traffic laws can enjoy many of Houston’s attractions and hidden pleasures by riding bicycles.

They can explore Downtown next to car traffic more safely than in previous years. They can travel to area museums and parks. The Greater East End allows them to experience the multicultural Eastern Downtown and nearby neighborhoods and even travel the 5-mile former train track stretch of the Harrisburg Hike and Bike Trail. The nearby Buffalo Bayou Park contains 15 miles of nature trails across 160 acres.

The White Oak Bayou Trail, a continuous trail of lanes and bridges that flows 17 miles through the city, offers a fantastic view of the Downtown skyline and opportunities to discover areas inside the historic Heights and Rice Military neighborhoods. Park and museum lovers can explore the Museum District and Hermann Park by bike, which provide access to the Miller Outdoor Theatre, the McGovern Centennial Gardens, and the Japanese Garden. Rural and urban mix landscape enthusiasts who want to enjoy a nice Sunday ride can find everything they need on the Brays Bayou Greenway Trail, with more than 30 miles of concrete and green spaces to take in.

Lastly, mountain bikers and all-terrain enthusiasts can find 30 miles of trails on the Memorial Park Hike and Bike Trailhead. Those living in or visiting the west of Downtown can explore forest-shaded lanes on the 10-mile Terry Hershey Hike and Bike Trail. If they want to find greenery to the north of Downtown, the Spring Creek Greenway, the largest “forested urban greenway” in the United States, offers more than 40 miles of opportunities for bicycling individuals, families and others to disappear from the hot urban jungle and dwell in cool, refreshing nature for a while.