Tucson Bike Route Safety Map

Tucson holds two facts at once. The Pima Association of Governments says the greater Tucson area was the first region in the United States to be designated by the League of American Bicyclists as a gold-level bicycle-friendly region, on a network of more than 1,000 miles. And a Consumer Affairs analysis of 2023 crash data found Tucson recorded 147 traffic fatalities that year, eight of them cyclists — a rate of 1.47 cyclist deaths per 100,000 residents, more than four times the national average of 0.35. Both are true because Tucson's riding splits cleanly between a world-class car-free path system and a grid of wide, fast arterials. Brakeaway scores any Tucson route 0–100 on protected infrastructure, path connectivity, crossing risk, traffic exposure and surface quality, so you can see which of those two Tucsons your line actually uses. Paste a Google Maps link, upload a GPX, or connect Strava. Informational only — not a substitute for local judgment. Verify conditions before you ride.

Score a Tucson route

How Brakeaway scores a Tucson route

Every route is analyzed across five factors, weighted for the conditions Tucson riders actually meet: an unusually strong shared-use path spine, a bicycle boulevard network that is real but partial, a small handful of protected on-street lanes, arterials that carry nearly all of the serious crashes, and desert-specific surface and seasonal hazards.

Protected infrastructure and path connectivity. What share of your line sits on a car-free shared-use path, a buffered or protected lane, or a traffic-calmed residential street? The Chuck Huckelberry Loop dominates this factor. Pima County describes it as "a system of paved, shared-use paths and short segments of buffered bike lanes," where "No motorized vehicles or devices allowed (ADA accessibility and official vehicles are exempt)." Segments of the Rillito, Santa Cruz, Pantano and Cañada del Oro river parks, the Julian Wash and Harrison Road Greenway, and the Aviation path all score at the top of the range.
Arterial crossing risk. This is where most Tucson routes bleed points. Living Streets Alliance reports that "In Tucson 80% of pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries occur on streets with speed limits of 35 MPH or more. And 90% of those fatalities and injuries occur on just 11% of Tucson's streets." Brakeaway penalizes both riding along those corridors and crossing them at grade — which is exactly why The Loop's riverbank alignment matters so much. Because the paths follow washes, they "pass under bridges at major streets" rather than stopping at them.
Traffic volume and exposure. A striped lane on a six-lane arterial with a 40 mph posted limit is scored as exposure, not protection. Much of Tucson's 1,000-plus-mile network is this kind of facility. It is genuinely useful for getting places and it does not score like a path, and the gap between those two things is the whole point of running a route before you ride it.
Surface quality and desert hazards. Tucson's paved paths are in good condition, but the wash alignment cuts both ways: monsoon storms deposit sand and scour the asphalt. Bicycle Tucson has reported that "A section of the Rillito path between Craycroft and Swan Roads cuts into the wash itself and was flooded" and that "Another section of the Rillito path between Country Club and Hacienda del Sol Roads had several areas that were washed out making it difficult to pass." Brakeaway downgrades unpaved and known-degraded segments, and treats goathead-season shoulder debris as a surface factor.
Elevation and grade. The Tucson basin is broadly flat and The Loop is flatter still — Rails-to-Trails describes the Rillito as "mostly flat, except for slight inclines approaching underpasses." The gradient lives at the edges: the Catalina Highway climb toward Mount Lemmon and the run up into the Santa Catalina foothills are long, sustained ascents out of the basin, and Brakeaway folds grade into the score rather than reporting it separately.

Highest-scoring Tucson bike routes

These are the routes that repeatedly land in Brakeaway's High Confidence band, because the separation is physical rather than painted.

The Chuck Huckelberry Loop — the full circuit

The reason Tucson is on this list at all. Pima County puts The Loop at "approximately 140 miles of paved, shared-use paths and short segments of buffered bike lanes" and says "More than 138 miles of paved pathways and bike lanes have already been completed with additional trails to come." It "extends through unincorporated Pima County, Marana, Oro Valley, Tucson, and South Tucson," and the closed circuit itself is specific: "The Santa Cruz River Park connects with the Rillito, Pantano, Harrison Greenway and Julian Wash to make a complete circuit of 53.9 miles." Published lengths differ because the system keeps growing and sources were written at different points in its build-out: KGUN, reporting on the renaming, described it as "the 131-mile shared-use trail," noting "The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to rename the 131-mile shared-use trail The Loop for County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry," who "has been advocating for the project in various forms since the early 1980s." Brakeaway scores the paved, car-free extents at the very top of its range; the short buffered-bike-lane connector segments score lower and are worth looking at before you commit to a lap.

Rillito River Park path (I-10 to Craycroft Road)

The Loop's best-known leg and its east–west spine across north Tucson. Rails-to-Trails Conservancy named it Trail of the Month for February 2025 and describes "the 22.4-mile trail" following "the banks of Tucson's seasonal Rillito River," on asphalt, running between "3608-3698 W. River Road, adjacent to I-10 (Tucson) and N. Craycroft Road on the north and south banks of the Rillito River." Local riders call it out for the same reason the engine does: Bicycle Tucson describes it as "A continuous car-free bike and pedestrian path which stretches from I-10 to Craycroft Road." Both banks are paved for much of the length, so you can often choose a side.

Santa Cruz River Park path

The north–south half of the circuit, running along the Santa Cruz through downtown-adjacent Tucson and out past South Tucson toward Marana. It carries the same car-free status and the same underpass treatment at major crossings, and it is the segment that ties the Rillito to the Julian Wash Greenway to close the 53.9-mile loop. It is also the segment most often affected by storm closures, because the Santa Cruz is the drainage the rest of the system feeds into.

Aviation Bikeway (Barraza-Aviation corridor)

Tucson's car-free path out of downtown to the east side. Bicycle Tucson describes it as "Another car-free route which starts just outside downtown Tucson and continues east to Kolb and Escalante Roads." It runs alongside the Barraza-Aviation Parkway, which means it delivers a genuinely separated commuting line across a part of town where the street alternatives are all arterials. It scores near the top of the range for its car-free extent and drops where you leave it.

Third Street bicycle boulevard

The busiest low-stress street in the region. Bicycle Tucson: "Third Street is the most popular bikeway in the region because it is a low-stress way to access the University of Arizona area. It stretches from Campbell Avenue on the west to Wilmot Road on the east." The City has an active project improving the 3rd Street bicycle boulevard alongside Treat Avenue. Brakeaway scores it in the upper part of its range — well above any striped arterial lane, below a car-free path, with the score dipping at each major north–south arterial it meets.

Treat Avenue bicycle boulevard

The north–south counterpart. Bicycle Tucson describes the Cactus/Treat route: "This north-south route stretches from the Rillito River path on the north to the Aviation bike path on the south." That is the sentence that matters for scoring — Treat is the connector that lets a route start on The Loop, cross midtown on calmed residential streets, and finish on another car-free path without ever committing to an arterial.

Blacklidge Drive

The east–west link that ties the north–south routes together. Bicycle Tucson: "This east-west route connects to several north-south routes including Treat Avenue, Mountain Avenue and Fontana Avenue," running from "10th Avenue on the west and Columbus Boulevard on the east." Useful precisely because it is boring: residential, calmed, and it does what a grid connector is supposed to do.

Mountain Avenue (University of Arizona to the Rillito)

The classic campus approach, and the one place on this list where the score is genuinely mixed. Bicycle Tucson notes it "connects the University of Arizona to the Rillito River on the north" and that "This route has the most traffic of any of the routes on the list," but also that "Between Speedway Boulevard and Ft. Lowell Road, the route features a bike lane that is buffered from traffic by several feet of bricks." Brakeaway rewards that buffered extent and marks down the rest, so a Mountain Avenue route typically returns a mid-range score with visible variation along its length rather than one flat number.

Tucson by area — what to expect

University of Arizona and midtown

The densest cycling in the state, and the best-served part of the bicycle boulevard network: Third Street, Treat, Blacklidge and Mountain all serve campus. The trade-off is the arterial grid around it — Speedway, Grant, Campbell and Broadway box the area in, and a route's score here is usually decided by how many of them it has to cross.

Downtown and the barrios

Downtown is compact, low-speed and increasingly treated. AZPM reported a "four-block long protected bicycle lane" on Stone Avenue "expected to be finished in early December 2024," funded through "Proposition 411, which was passed a couple of years ago by the voters, and that is really focused on safety improvements." The project engineer described the approach plainly: "We're reconfiguring the street and in some blocks we are losing a lane of traffic...we narrowed those up and hopefully we'll get a decrease in traffic speeds." Four blocks is four blocks, and Brakeaway scores it as such — but downtown's real asset is that the Santa Cruz path and the Aviation Bikeway both start within reach of it.

North Tucson, the Catalina Foothills, Oro Valley and Marana

Loop country. The Rillito and Cañada del Oro river parks give this side of town the longest continuous car-free riding in the metro, and the Loop's reach into Oro Valley and Marana means a genuinely long ride is possible without arterial exposure. Leave the path and head up into the foothills and the picture changes: the climbing roads are scenic, lightly trafficked in places, and mostly unprotected.

East side

The Aviation Bikeway and the Pantano River Park path are the backbone here, with Third Street reaching east to Wilmot. Between them sit long arterial blocks — Golf Links, Speedway, Craycroft, Swan, Wilmot and Kolb — and east-side routes tend to score in bands rather than smoothly, high on the path segments and much lower on the connectors.

South Tucson and the south side

The Julian Wash Greenway and Harrison Road Greenway close the southern arc of the Loop circuit, and the Santa Cruz path runs down the west edge. This is also where Living Streets Alliance concentrates its advocacy: the Fall 2026 Cyclovia Tucson route "once again connect[s] vibrant communities in South Tucson and Downtown Tucson from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM." Off the greenways, south-side arterials are wide and fast and score accordingly.

The roads Tucson riders route around

The wide arterials, as a class. Tucson's danger is not concentrated in one notorious road the way Philadelphia's is on Roosevelt Boulevard. It is concentrated in a road type. Living Streets Alliance's reading of Dangerous by Design 2024 is blunt about the geometry: "In Tucson 80% of pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries occur on streets with speed limits of 35 MPH or more. And 90% of those fatalities and injuries occur on just 11% of Tucson's streets." That 11% is the arterial grid. Tucson Police collision data puts Golf Links Road at the front of it — a local crash-injury firm's review notes it "shows up again and again in Tucson Police Department collision data, at Swan Road, at Craycroft Road, and at Wilmot Road, all within a few miles of one another," and describes it as a "wide, multi-lane arterial built for speed, with long gaps between protected crossings." The same review says "Broadway Boulevard and Grant Road carry the same profile," and lists recurring crash intersections "between Valencia Road and Nogales Highway," "at Golf Links Road and Swan Road," and "at Golf Links Road and Craycroft Road." Those are the lines the engine flags hardest.

The trend, not just the total. The same report ranked "Tucson as the third (3rd) deadliest metro area in the nation for pedestrians, an alarming change from when Tucson ranked 13th just two years ago," noting "there were 105 pedestrian deaths between 2013-2017 in the greater Tucson area, with an increase to 217 between 2018-2022." For cyclists specifically, the Consumer Affairs analysis found "Tucson recorded 147 traffic fatalities in 2023, eight of them cyclists," which "amounts to 1.47 cyclist deaths per 100,000 residents — more than four times the national average of 0.35."

What that means for a score. A Tucson route is rarely uniformly bad. It is usually excellent for most of its length and then spends ninety seconds on or across something from that 11%. Pre-scoring is worth more here than in almost any city on this site, because the fix — shifting a crossing half a mile to an underpass, or picking up a bicycle boulevard one street over — is usually available.

What Tucson is building next

Two policy levers shape the next decade. Tucson's Complete Streets policy "was unanimously adopted by Mayor Regina Romero and the City Council in February 2019," directing right-of-way allocation across modes. And Proposition 411 passed at the ballot box: KOLD reported that "Tucsonans voted to pass Proposition 411, extending the city's temporary half-cent sales tax instilled in 2017, on Tuesday, May 17," and that "Tucson officials plan to direct $740 million from estimated sales tax revenue towards a 10-year plan to improve neighborhood streets and improve street safety citywide." Living Streets Alliance, campaigning for it, put the split at "20% will go toward specific investments to enhance safety on Tucson's streets."

The bicycle boulevard program is where that money shows up on a map. The City defines the facility type clearly — "Bicycle boulevards are residential streets designed to prioritize bicycling and enhance conditions for walking" — and states the ambition just as clearly: "The bicycle boulevard network will serve as the backbone for walking and biking in Tucson." The Department of Transportation "has identified 193 miles of future bicycle boulevards along 64 corridors that improve connectivity to schools, parks, libraries, stores and other key destinations." Active projects include 3rd Street and Treat; Arcadia and Timrod; and Michigan, Cherry, Greenway and Bantam. The practical implication for riders is that a midtown corridor scoring in the middle of the range today may score meaningfully higher after treatment, so re-scoring a regular commute once or twice a year is worth the ten seconds.

Things worth knowing before your first Tucson ride

Check The Loop before you ride it. This is the single most Tucson-specific piece of advice on the page. The path system follows washes, and washes flood. Bicycle Tucson has reported "the underpass that connects the Rillito and Santa Cruz river paths was flooded and closed" and that "the path could be closed for several weeks while they clean up the mess and complete repairs." Pima County posts closures — planned ones too, such as "The Loop will be closed from Sanders Road to just south of Avra Valley Road from Monday, August 31, 2026, to Monday, September 14, for pavement preservation work." A high Brakeaway score describes the built path, not whether it is open and clear today.

Heat is a routing input. Summer riding in the Sonoran Desert is an early-morning activity. Shade on the river paths is intermittent, water is not continuous along every segment, and the same route that is pleasant at 6 a.m. in June is a different proposition at 4 p.m. Brakeaway does not score temperature; plan it yourself.

Tugo is the city's bike share. The City says "Tugo Bike Share has 40 stations and 330 bikes across 13 Tucson neighborhoods available 24/7, 365 days a year," and that "Tugo is made possible through a partnership with the City of Tucson, the system operator, Shift Transit, and the equipment provider, PBSC Urban Solutions." Brakeaway scores a Tugo trip exactly like a trip on your own bike.

BICAS is the local institution. "BICAS (Bicycle Inter-Community Art & Salvage) is a worker self-directed nonprofit 501(c)(3) bicycle center located just north of downtown Tucson," which "started in late 1989 as an organization called Bootstraps to Share." Its stated mission is "to participate in affordable bicycle transportation, education, and creative recycling with our greater Tucson community." If you need a wrench, a used part, or a class, that is where Tucson sends you.

The big-event calendar matters. El Tour de Tucson "is a road bicycling event held every November in Tucson, Arizona," "started in 1983 by cyclist and president of the Perimeter Bicycling, Richard DeBernardis," with "several routes of differing lengths, ranging from 32 miles (51 km) to 102 miles (164 km)." Cyclovia Tucson opens streets to people on foot and on bikes for a day at a time. Both change what the road network looks like while they run. Neither changes how a route scores, but both change what riding in Tucson feels like, and both are how a lot of people meet the network for the first time.

Pre-score the crossings, not the miles. Most of the score damage on a Tucson route happens at a handful of arterial crossings rather than along the long quiet stretches in between. Run the route first and look at where the line goes red.

Resources

Frequently asked questions

Is Brakeaway free to use for Tucson routes?

Yes. Scoring routes — in Tucson or any other city Brakeaway covers — is free. Upload a GPX file, paste a Google Maps directions link, or connect Strava to import existing rides. Every score is informational data, not a substitute for local judgment; verify conditions before you ride.

What is the Chuck Huckelberry Loop and why does it score so high?

Pima County describes The Loop as a system of paved, shared-use paths and short segments of buffered bike lanes connecting the Cañada del Oro, Rillito, Santa Cruz, and Pantano River Parks with the Julian Wash and Harrison Road Greenway, extending through unincorporated Pima County, Marana, Oro Valley, Tucson, and South Tucson. The County puts the system at approximately 140 miles and says more than 138 miles of paved pathways and bike lanes have already been completed. It scores at the top of Brakeaway's range because motorized vehicles are not allowed on it and, because it follows riverbanks, it passes under bridges at major streets instead of crossing them at grade.

What is a Tucson bicycle boulevard?

The City of Tucson defines bicycle boulevards as residential streets designed to prioritize bicycling and enhance conditions for walking, and says the bicycle boulevard network will serve as the backbone for walking and biking in Tucson. The Department of Transportation has identified 193 miles of future bicycle boulevards along 64 corridors. Brakeaway scores them well above a painted lane on an arterial because the treatments suppress motor traffic rather than sitting next to it, but below a fully car-free path, because a bicycle boulevard is still a street.

Which Tucson roads does Brakeaway flag hardest?

The wide, fast arterials. Living Streets Alliance reports that in Tucson 80% of pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries occur on streets with speed limits of 35 MPH or more, and that 90% of those fatalities and injuries occur on just 11% of Tucson's streets. That concentration is what the engine penalizes — both riding along those corridors and crossing them unprotected. A quiet bicycle boulevard can lose most of its points at a single arterial crossing.

How does Brakeaway handle monsoon flooding and Loop closures?

It does not, and that is the most important caveat on this page. Brakeaway scores built infrastructure, not today's conditions. The Loop follows washes and riverbanks, so storms close it: Bicycle Tucson has reported that the underpass that connects the Rillito and Santa Cruz river paths was flooded and closed and that the path could be closed for several weeks while crews clean up and complete repairs. Pima County posts scheduled and unscheduled Loop closures, and a high score is not a statement that a segment is open or dry today.

Does Brakeaway score Tugo bike share trips?

Yes, and identically to a trip on your own bike — the hardware does not change the infrastructure under the wheels. The City of Tucson says Tugo Bike Share has 40 stations and 330 bikes across 13 Tucson neighborhoods available 24/7, 365 days a year, and that Tugo is made possible through a partnership with the City of Tucson, the system operator, Shift Transit, and the equipment provider, PBSC Urban Solutions.

How often is Tucson route data updated?

Infrastructure data is refreshed monthly from OpenStreetMap and published City of Tucson and Pima County datasets. New Loop segments, new bicycle boulevard treatments and new protected lanes built under Proposition 411 are reflected in scores within about 30 days of appearing in the source data.

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Last updated: September 24, 2026.