A Tale Between Two Cities

Ashland and Medford are approximately 13 miles apart. They share the Bear Creek Greenway, the Rogue Valley's climate, and a regional economy built on tourism and quality of life. But when it comes to bikeability, each city tells a different story.

How PeopleForBikes Measures Bikeability

PeopleForBikes rates nearly 3,000 cities across the country on how well their bike networks connect people to the places they need to go.

The engine behind the ratings, built on an open-source tool, is the Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA). It pulls real-world data from OpenStreetMap, U.S. Census boundary and population data, and federal employment statistics (LEHD) to map every street, path, and destination in a city.

The BNA then evaluates every road segment for Level of Traffic Stress (LTS), a framework developed by researchers Maaza Mekuria, Peter Furth, and Hilary Nixon at the Mineta Transportation Institute and published in peer-reviewed academic journals. The LTS framework classifies every street on a four-point scale based on lane counts, lane widths, speed limits, traffic signals, and the presence of parked cars. LTS 1 is comfortable enough for a child. LTS 2, based on Dutch bikeway design standards, represents what most adults will tolerate. LTS 3 and 4 are the kind of roads where only the most confident cyclists feel safe.

The key insight: a bike network is only as useful as its weakest link. If getting from your house to the grocery store requires crossing even one high-stress road, most people won't make that trip by bike. The BNA measures this by analyzing whether residents in each census block can reach everyday destinations entirely via low-stress routes, without detours that make biking impractical.

For further details on this analysis, check it out here.

How Do Ashland and Medford Compare?

Here is the data:

Category	Ashland	Medford
Overall	73	29
People	77	32
Opportunity	75	30
Core Services	68	26
Recreation	73	40
Retail	76	26
Transit	0	21

Ashland scores 73 out of 100. That's #1 in all of Oregon, #32 in the United States, and in the 96th percentile nationally. Portland, a city famous for its bike culture, comes in at #3 in Oregon with a score of 61. Ashland beats Portland by 12 points.

Medford? 29 out of 100. That's 21st in Oregon and 866th in the country.

Can we trust these numbers?

In short: yes. As mentioned, it's built on a methodology that originated in academic transportation research, was published in peer-reviewed journals, and aligns with NACTO street and bikeway design standards used by transportation departments across the country. The source code is open on GitHub for anyone to audit and view.

Breaking Down the Scores

A score below 50 means the city's bike network has serious gaps. People can't safely get where they need to go on a bike. A score above 50 means the city is building real momentum toward being a place where biking is a genuine option for everyday trips.

Ashland is well past that tipping point. Medford hasn't reached it.

Look at the core services score: Ashland is at 68, Medford is at 26. That means in Medford, most residents can't safely bike to places they need to get to, such as the grocery store. If one wants to bike to work or school in Medford, good luck.

The one category where Medford shows any life is recreation at 40, likely thanks to the Bear Creek Greenway. But a trail alone doesn't make a bike network. Also, one needs to be able to get to the greenway safely!

What This Means for Medford

Medford is the largest city in southern Oregon. It's the regional hub. It competes with Ashland, Bend, and other Oregon cities for tourism, for families choosing where to settle, and for businesses deciding where to invest.

Families looking at the Rogue Valley can see these numbers. A young couple deciding between Ashland and Medford can look at this data and see that one city invested in safe streets and the other didn't. A business owner evaluating downtown locations can see that Ashland's retail connectivity score is three times Medford's.

Tourism thrives in places that are pleasant to be in on foot and on a bike. That's why people flock to Ashland's plaza, why they walk Jacksonville's California Street, and why Bend keeps climbing the rankings. Medford has every geographic advantage: the greenway, the climate, proximity to various outdoor activities, a downtown grid that's built for it. But the score says the city is not taking advantage of any of this.

Where the Difference Comes From

Ashland didn't get to #1 in Oregon by accident. They invested in connected, low-stress bike routes.

Medford has 601 miles of low-stress routes but also 209 miles of high-stress roads. The raw miles are there. The connections aren't. And instead of closing the gaps, Medford's city council voted to spend $1 million ripping out a bike lane that was already working on Main Street.

That's the difference. One city builds. The other tears down.

It Doesn't Have to Stay This Way

PeopleForBikes has documented cities that jumped 45 points in just a few years by making smart investments. Bloomington, Indiana went from 13 to 58 with protected lanes, lower speed limits, and a commitment to connected routes.

Medford has the bones. It has the greenway, the downtown grid, and a community that showed up in record numbers to defend bike infrastructure. What it needs is leadership willing to look at the scoreboard and decide that 29 isn't good enough for a city that wants to be a destination.

It's not too late, Medford can choose differently.

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