Seattle front of the pack for bike commuting in U.S. cities
Bicyclists in tech-friendly Seattle logged more than 3.3 million miles last year, and showed their love for the Westlake protected bike path along Lake Union, according to data from Strava, a fitness and social media app popular among the wheeled set.
The data is part of the first commute report from Strava, which the company said it shares with 4,000 city planners and government agencies for a clearer picture of bicycle commuting patterns, and to better support planning of new bikeways and bike sharing programs.
Seattle placed above all other U.S. cities in the ranking - with 3,339,306 miles, to be exact. Chicago came next, with 2.5 million miles, followed by Minneapolis-St. Paul, with 1.7 million miles.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. wasn't the top country in the report, considering the app has 195 million users in over 185 countries. Seattle's share of the global total of 550 million miles comes to just half a percent.
The fact that not every person on a bike uses the app may limit the data's usefulness. Users of the app allow it to track their rides in real time - including distance, elevation gain, average and maximum speed and more - and share their stats with other people who use the app.
Mariam Ali, a spokesperson with the Seattle Department of Transportation, said the city is aware of Strava's data, and will use it to supplement its own to better understand biking activity in Seattle.
That said, we don't use Strava data as an official or primary source, since it represents only a subset of riders," Ali wrote in an email. "We rely on our own counts and other local datasets for planning and reporting."
To Ali's point about the relatively limited data, the neighborhood that Strava users commuted to the most in Seattle was South Lake Union, followed by the Denny Triangle. The most popular segment was the Westlake bikeway. Millennials were the most represented generation in the data, followed by Gen Z.
So, just perhaps, the armies of young, app-friendly workers heading to the many tech companies in South Lake Union are overrepresented in the data.
Regardless, the data is useful, if only because Seattle cyclists logged the equivalent of riding the city's roughly 80-mile perimeter nearly 42,000 times, which even modern cycling powerhouse Tadej Pogačar would have trouble doing.
Strava's trove of data showed that the most popular segments on wheels, after Westlake, are the Burke-Gilman Trail from under Interstate 5 to Gas Works Park, Eighth Avenue Northwest to the Fremont Bridge, part of the Burke-Gilman that cuts through the University of Washington campus, and over the Highway 520 bridge on Lake Washington.
The Westlake segment, which runs from the Fremont Bridge to near the Museum of History & Industry in South Lake Union, ranks as one of the most popular places to ride a bike in the country, along with two paths in New York City - one along the western edge of Manhattan in Hell's Kitchen, and the other on the Queensboro Bridge connecting Manhattan to Queens.
SDOT's Ali said Strava's data validated Seattle's method of building bicycling infrastructure by highlighting the Westlake path, which opened 10 years ago this year.
"As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the corridor later this year," Ali said, "it's a great example of how safe, connected infrastructure can support strong ridership and become a key part of Seattle's bike network.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the rankings of Iceland, Belgium and Norway. They lead in Strava's data for use of electric bikes.
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This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 6:42 AM.