Houston rolls out surprising ranking on list of bike-friendly cities in the US

HOUSTON, Texas -- Houston is a bona-fide car town, but how does it rank for biking? A new survey on bikeability gives Houston a fairly decent - and somewhat surprising - ranking for that cycling life. In a list of the top 50 cities in the U.S., Houston ranks No. 29 and boasts a bikeability score of 49.

Drilling down, that means the Bayou City has 0.3% of workers who commute by bicycle, a little below the average city's 0.5%, with 0.4 bike shops per 100,000 people and 0.3% bike trails per 100,000 people.

SEE RELATED: Key local road projects in The Heights, Montrose make way for bike lanes

In a little good local news, the pivotal M-K-T Bridge has reopened, as CultureMap reported, meaning an open path for thousands of bikers each day. And the city has a new bike festival to celebrate all things two wheels.

The study was released by Clever, a real estate data company, and analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information, Walk Score, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Vision Zero Network, Google Trends, and Yelp.

SEE ALSO: 'Tollways to trailways:' HCTRA unveils new $53M plan to expand off the roads

Continue reading this article from our ABC13 partners at Houston CultureMap.