New Bikes at Electrify, Public Lands for Sale, and 2025 City Ratings | TWR Ep 37

Griffin ventured to Los Angeles for the Electrify Expo over the weekend of June 21st-22nd. The show, which has eight stops planned in its 2025 run, features e-bikes, electric scooters, full-size EVs (including cars and trucks), electric skateboards, and even e-watercraft.

Highlights from the show included:

Griffin also saw folks enjoying Ride1Up’s diverse lineup, a fleet of highly customized JackRabbits, a new S2 e-bike from moto-style brand Super 73, and some useful flat protection products from Tannus.

Our Take: We’re always excited to see what new products are on the horizon; we look forward to testing and reviewing some or all of the items listed above.

The Electrify Expo has a handful of other stops on its tour, which ends in October. The Seattle show takes place in July, while San Francisco hosts the August event. September’s event will take place in Chicago, while the Expo ends in New York. We highly recommend checking it out!

As People for Bikes reports, the proposed legislation supports the sale of over 3 million acres of public lands (more recent sources state that this number has been reduced to 1.2 million acres). If approved by the US Senate, any land sold would be used for the construction of housing or “community needs as defined by the Secretary of the Interior.”

Many of the proposed areas, which include properties governed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), feature wilderness and recreation sites for activities such as mountain biking, camping, hunting, and fishing.

Public land in eleven states is threatened, including areas in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

Our Take: As proponents of the bike industry, enjoyers of many trails built on BLM property, and residents of areas that would be affected by this legislation, we strongly oppose the bill and any sale that threatens public lands. Once such land is sold, it is gone forever.

We strongly encourage anyone who feels the same to take action and contact your local representatives via the form on the People for Bikes website.

The rating system scores cities based on a variety of metrics related to bike friendliness, including traffic stress analysis and destination access analysis. Cities are judged on their speed limits, number of protected bike lanes, amount of reallocated space, intersection treatments, network connections, and trusted data.

The highest-scored city is currently Mackinac Island in Michigan, which has a permanent population of only 663 residents. It’s worth noting that the island is closed to e-bikes. The best city with a high population is Davis, California, with an impressive score of 81 and a total population of 66,800 residents.

The lowest-ranked city (of over 2900 locations) was Gulfport, FL, which shared its score of 3/100 with other cities in Idaho, Texas, and New York.

Our Take:
We’d argue that our city is better-suited to biking than its score of 33/100 would suggest, but regardless, it’s fun to check out the rankings. We give kudos to the cities that scored highly (especially those that improved!) and encourage locations with low ratings to put a bigger priority on bike infrastructure, access, and safety!