Companies increasingly want to locate in bicycle-friendly places as a way to attract the young workers they need in order to thrive, especially in competitive tech and creative fields. Chicago is vigorously building bikeways as part of its pursuit of high-tech businesses, a strategy that paid off when Motorola Mobility decamped from the suburbs to a new headquarters near the city's first protected bike lane.

The large advertising firm Colle+McVoy moved to downtown Minneapolis, as CEO Christine Fruechte explains, "to allow our employees to take advantage of the area's many trails and to put the office in a more convenient location for commuting by pedal or foot. Our employees are healthier, happier and more productive. We are attracting some of the best talent in the industry."

Austin, Texas, is ambitiously expanding its bike infrastructure and has become one of the nation's leaders in protected bike lanes. Cirrus Logic, a computer company, moved downtown several years ago because the area's bike trails and protected lanes made the firm "more attractive as an employer," explains Public Relations Director Bill Schnell. "We can't just pluck anybody for our jobs. The people we want are mostly younger, and biking is part of the equation for them."

Memphis is also pushing protected bike lanes. "My job is to convince emerging companies that they can get the workers they want to come here. The bike is part of the overall strategy to compete for talent," offers Steven J. Bares, Ph.D., president of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, an initiative to bring fast-growing health care companies to Memphis.

7. More Opportunity

Marvin R. Anderson, a retired lawyer, has spent much of his life working to boost St. Paul's African-American community. "Encouraging bicycling and walking are important to reweaving the Rondo neighborhood," Anderson says about the once-thriving, tight-knit community that was displaced and destroyed in the 1960s by construction of Interstate 94. "Biking and walking are healthy. Biking and walking can save people money. We need to create a culture of biking and walking."

Barbara McCann of USDOT notes, "Safe bicycling conditions provide low-income Americans with an opportunity to get to jobs, education, stores and transit so they don't have to pull together a lot of money to buy a car."

Being able to thrive without a car is essential to many African-Americans, one-third of who have no access to a car, and Latinos, one-quarter of who are carless, according to a report by the Leadership Conference Education Fund. For individuals who don't own a car or have access to one, bicycling represents important pathways to opportunity.