Early access — Bike Safe Wisconsin is in active development and open for community testing. Scores and routes are planning-level estimates and are still being refined; if you have any thoughts, flag them right on the map or email [email protected] — it helps.
Every county · Free · No account needed

Where is it actually safe to bike in your community?

Bike Safe Wisconsin scores every public road and path in the state for bicycle traffic stress. It finds the calmest way to ride between any two places and shows exactly where a trip is forced across a busy road. You know your roads better than any dataset — share what you see and the map sharpens week by week. Log the trips you take, or wish you could, and they become the evidence your community needs to fix streets.

72Wisconsin counties covered
Every road & pathscored for traffic stress
3 route optionssafest · balanced · most direct
What you can do

A planning aid built for families, riders, and neighbors

Everything is free and runs in your browser — no account, no sign-in. Share a route by link, or download it as GPX for your device.

Explore the stress map

Color-coded traffic stress for the whole state, with layers for traffic volume, crash history, and planned bike projects. Zoom to your county and see your streets the way a cautious rider does.

Plan a low-stress route

Pick two places — home to school, house to park — and compare the safest, balanced, and most direct options, with hill avoidance and clear warnings where you must cross a busy road.

Log the trips you want

Record rides you take, or wish you could take. Trip points are stored as the nearest street corner — pulled further away in low-density areas, never your exact house. Together these become your community's case for safer crossings.

Share what you see

A new path, a changed speed limit, a road that rides differently than it scores — one tap on the map sends it for review. Every flag is checked against the scoring method, and updates that trace to OpenStreetMap land on a public task list anyone can tackle.

The method

Traffic stress, scored the way agencies score it

Every segment receives a bicycle Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) rating from posted and observed speeds, lane counts, and bike facilities — the same Montgomery County / Mineta-lineage method used in professional bicycle network plans, applied to OpenStreetMap data enriched with WisDOT and City of Madison traffic counts and statewide crash records.

LTS 1calm — most kids
LTS 2most adults
LTS 3confident riders
LTS 4high stress
LTS 5extreme — not recommended

Full write-up: how routes and stress scores are computed (PDF).

Honest limits: this is a planning-level screening aid, not a guarantee of safety. Scores come from mapped data, which can be incomplete or out of date, and low crash counts do not mean a road is safe. Verify conditions in person and use your own judgment.
Your county

Find your county

Every Wisconsin county is scored with the same method. Jump straight to yours for its stress picture, crash history, and a route planner that knows its streets.

Open county page

Or browse all 72 counties →

How your input becomes change

From one ride to a safer street

There are two ways to help, and they work on two speeds. Sharpen the map: share what you see on the ground — every rider flag is reviewed against the scoring method, and improvements often ship within days. Build the case: log the trips you take or wish you could — that record is what wins crossings, paths, and calmer streets over months and years.

Ride — or wish you could

You log a trip you take, or one you'd take if it felt safe. It takes about a minute.

Evidence accumulates

Trips pool into a community record: "families here want to reach this park, and they're all forced across the same crossing."

The case gets made

That record, paired with the stress map and crash history, is what local governments need to justify and fund fixes — crossings, paths, calmer streets.

Local knowledge matters most where data is thinnest: many of the safest routes depend on neighborhood cut-throughs no public dataset records. If you know one, flag it on the map or email [email protected].

For communities & local officials

See what this data says about your community

If you work for a village, city, school district, or county, or you serve on a plan commission or bike/ped committee, the map and its community record can directly support your planning work:

  • Safe Routes to School conversations and applications
  • Comprehensive-plan and bike/ped-plan elements
  • Grant applications (TAP, SRTS, HSIP) backed by demand evidence
  • Spotting the low-cost moment: fixing a crossing when a road project is already coming
  • Add your adopted plan's projects to the map — free, credited to your plan, shown to every resident who routes through your community

Free walk-through

I'll walk you through what the data shows about your community: the stress map, where residents are asking to ride, and the crossings standing in the way. There's no cost. I built this to be useful and to help make biking safer across Wisconsin.

Email [email protected]

Find the calm way to ride

Free, statewide, and ready in your browser — no account needed.

Open the map