Ann Arbor's Transportation Future, One Year Later

written by Greg L. Hughes

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Last year, we wrote that Ann Arbor sat at a crossroads — a college town with a green reputation, but a bike network with real gaps. A year later, the crossroads is still here. What's changed is that we now have two new pieces of information about which direction the city takes next: a fresh round of national bikeability data, and a new mayor and a city council with three newly elected voices. 

The Numbers Moved

PeopleForBikes' 2026 City Ratings put Ann Arbor at 51 out of 100[1] — the highest rating the city has ever received. It's also the first time Ann Arbor has crossed the 50-point mark PeopleForBikes treats as the threshold where a low-stress bike network starts being genuinely useful for everyday trips, not just recreation.[1] The rating is a six-point jump from last year's 45[2], and it came in a year when the rating criteria got harder to meet, not easier: PeopleForBikes tightened its low-stress design standards and moved to more current census data for 2026[4], yet Ann Arbor's score still grew faster than at any point since it's been rated. Nationally, the story is similar — 555 U.S. cities cleared the 50-point mark this year, more than double the 234 that did in 2025.[1]

PeopleForBikes scores cities across six categories — how well the network connects residents to each other, to jobs and schools, to daily needs like groceries and healthcare, to parks, to retail, and to transit — and rolls them into the single 0-100 score. Because the 2026 rules changed so much, PeopleForBikes cautions that year-over-year comparisons aren't a clean measure of what's actually been built; Ann Arbor's gain reflects real progress, but also a materially different yardstick than last year's score was measured against. 

The Gap That's Still There

The city's weakest score, by a wide margin, is Transit access — a 32 out of 100[2] measuring how well the bike network connects neighborhoods to bus and rail hubs, as opposed to shops or parks (both of which score much better). It's tempting to chalk that up to Ann Arbor's size, but the data doesn't support that: Berkeley, California, a city with almost Ann Arbor's exact population, scores 65 overall and 56 on Transit specifically.[3] The difference isn't how big the city is — it's whether protected lanes actually form a continuous route all the way to a bus stop or station, instead of stopping short and dumping riders onto arterial traffic for the last stretch. 

A New Council Takes Up the Question

Ann Arbor elected a new mayor this August, and two council seats went to newly elected members, while two incumbents — including Ward 5's Jenn Cornell and Ward 1's Cynthia Harrison — held their seats. Where all of them land on non-motorized transportation will shape the future of non-motorized trails in Ann Arbor. Walk Bike Washtenaw sent a candidate questionnaire ahead of the primary[5], and some — not all — of the winners are on record. Mayor-elect Yousef Rabhi points to his record securing non-motorized transit funding at the county level and calls closing the Border-to-Border Trail's remaining gaps "a defining legacy" of his public service.[5] Ward 5's Jenn Cornell cites a quick-build bike lane she co-sponsored connecting the UM medical campus to downtown.[5] Ward 1's Cynthia Harrison and Ward 4's Aidan Sova both back reconfiguring Washtenaw Avenue and State Street for the region's planned Bus Rapid Transit lines and accelerating the city's High Injury Network work.[5] Not every official elected in the August primary participated in the survey, so this is a partial picture of the incoming council's thinking but it's a useful starting point for residents trying to gauge what's coming.

Building to a Standard

Whatever the city builds next, there's now a clearer bar to build it to. NACTO's Urban Bikeway Design Guide[6] — the same standard PeopleForBikes leaned on to tighten its 2026 criteria[4] — lays out what actually counts as a safe, low-stress bike lane, down to the speed limits a street needs before a painted lane qualifies. PeopleForBikes' own guidance to communities is straightforward: get local officials to formally adopt design guides like NACTO's, and bring in trained engineers rather than defaulting to whatever's cheapest during a routine repave.[7] 

Where the Treeline Fits

Ann Arbor’s connectivity gap that the PeopleforBikes data highlights, has a solution  - the Treeline. Its backbone infrastructure provides a route that gets people all the way to where they need to go in a low-stress manner - and that’s not just for cyclists but for pedestrians of all mobility levels. 

The Treeline's approach creates a continuous, grade-separated route along the Allen Creek corridor — connecting downtown to the Huron River, the Border-to-Border Trail, and the University of Michigan campus without competing for road space. The project's first phase, the Gateway segment, received a $1 million allocation in Michigan's 2026 state budget — the largest public commitment to the project to date — with design beginning in October and construction possible within four three years.[8] 

Ann Arbor's numbers are moving in the right direction. Closing the rest of the way means investing in continuous, connected routes — which is exactly what the Treeline is built to do. Learn more about supporting the project at thetreeline.org/support

Sources

1. PeopleForBikes. "Rising Standards, Better Results: U.S. Cities Continue to Improve for Bicycling." Retrieved from: https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/2026-city-ratings-summary-report
2. PeopleForBikes City Ratings - Ann Arbor, Michigan. Retrieved from: https://cityratings.peopleforbikes.org/cities/ann-arbor-mi
3. PeopleForBikes City Ratings - Berkeley, California. Retrieved from: https://cityratings.peopleforbikes.org/cities/berkeley-ca
4. PeopleForBikes. "2026 City Ratings Methodology Updates: What Is Changing and Why It Matters." Retrieved from: https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/2026-city-ratings-methodology
5. Walk Bike Washtenaw. "2026 Ann Arbor City Council Candidate Questionnaire." Retrieved from: https://www.walkbikewashtenaw.org/single-post/2026-ann-arbor-city-council-candidate-questionnaire
6. NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials). Retrieved from: https://nacto.org
7. PeopleForBikes. "Resources to Build Great Places to Ride." Retrieved from: https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/resources-to-build-great-places-to-ride
8. eCurrent. "The Treeline Could Transform Ann Arbor with a New Linear Park" Retrieved from: https://www.ecurrent.com/feature/the-treeline-could-transform-ann-arbor-with-a-new-linear-park

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