One Canadian city ranks among the 20 most bike-friendly in the world

Biking in Canada’s cities falls somewhere between not ideal and life-threatening.

Sure, things are getting better, but there are still a lot of improvements to be made. Case in point: only one Canadian city is among the 20 most bike-friendly in the world.

That honour goes to Montreal, which ranks 16th in a report composed by the digital insurance company Coya.

Utrecht is the world’s most bike-friendly city

Meanwhile, the world’s most bike-friendly city is Utrecht, in the Netherlands. More than half of Utrecht’s population rides a bike every day, by the far highest score of any city on the list. Munster, Germany is second; Antwerp, Belgium rounds out the top three.

Cities were evaluated based on 16 metrics, from cyclist fatality rate to weather and number of thefts to number of car-free days.

“We believe that the road to future mobility is on two wheels,” reads the Coya report. “Cyclists should be free to get from A to B, without having to worry about road quality, safety or bicycle theft. We decided to investigate which cities around the world are improving their overall cycling conditions, as well as encouraging bicycle-usage as a healthy, sustainable mode of transport.”

Overall, ninety cities were surveyed. Vancouver is the only other Canadian city to feature in the ranking, at 37th. Only three cities in the top 20 are outside of Europe.