Methodology & Data Sources

CanIBikeHere is built entirely from authoritative public data. The current release covers 110 national forests across 39 states — 86,023 mapped trail segments, of which 8,549 carry a bike or e-bike designation (27,763 mi).

Primary data source

All trail facts come from the U.S. Forest Service National Forest System Trails dataset (the EDW Trans_Trail_NFS_Publish layer), the agency's official travel-management data. For every trail segment it records the managed, accepted, accepted-but-discouraged and restricted seasons for each use — including bicycle and e-bike Class 1, 2 and 3 — plus trail class, surface, typical grade, accessibility status and mileage. Forest names and boundaries come from the USFS Administrative Forest Boundaries layer.

How we derive each figure

• Bike / e-bike status. A use is "allowed" when the USFS records a managed or accepted season for it; "discouraged" or "restricted" when only those designations exist; otherwise "not designated."
• Season. The USFS encodes each designation as date ranges (e.g. 06/01–10/31). We union those ranges into the open months and render a plain-language window.
• Miles. Summed from each segment's GIS mileage (falling back to recorded segment length where GIS mileage is absent).
• Forest & state. Each trail's administrative org code maps to its national forest. A forest can span more than one state, so we use primary-state assignment: each multi-state forest is assigned to a single primary state (the state where the notable riding sits) and appears under that one state slug rather than being split or double-counted across borders.

The Bike Access Grade

Each national forest carries an A–F Bike Access Grade — a measure of how open its trail network is to mountain bikes. It grades regulatory access, not trail quality or difficulty: there is no citable national standard for how "good" a trail is, and we will not invent one. What the grade reflects is exactly what the governing law speaks to — the USFS Travel Management Rule (36 CFR Part 212), which determines the uses allowed on each trail, and the 2020 Forest Service e-bike directive (FSM 7715), which classifies e-bikes into Class 1, 2 and 3.

The grade is the share of a forest's rideable trail miles (trails where USFS data designates bikes or Class-1 e-bikes) that are open to traditional mountain bikes: A ≥ 65% (and Class-1 e-bikes allowed somewhere in the forest), B ≥ 45%, C ≥ 25%,D ≥ 10%, F below 10%. Per-trail, the same USFS status maps straight to a badge — open to bikes, discouraged, seasonal/conditional, or closed — with no inference.

Access is genuinely bimodal: some forests welcome bikes on nearly every rideable trail while wilderness-heavy forests are largely closed. Across 88 graded forests the split is A 34%, B 17%, C 19%, D 9%, F 20% — a real distribution, not a forced curve. See the most bike-friendly national forests.

Known limitations

• Grade is not technical difficulty. USFS records trail grade (steepness), not an MTB technical rating. We show grade where present but never infer a green/blue/black rating from it.
• Designation completeness varies by forest. Some forests populated the e-bike fields comprehensively during travel-management amendments while leaving the legacy bicycle field sparse; we present both signals separately rather than conflating them.
• Not live conditions. This is the regulatory and structural layer — designations and seasons — not real-time trail status, closures or weather.
• Federal land only. The current release covers National Forest System trails, not state, county, city or private land.

Not legal advice

E-bike and trail designations change, and forest- or district-level orders can override the published data. Always confirm current rules with the managing ranger district before you ride. CanIBikeHere is informational and is not legal advice, and we do not imply U.S. Forest Service endorsement.

License & how to cite

USFS trail data is a U.S. Government work in the public domain (17 U.S.C. § 105). Our derived figures and analysis are free to reference with attribution:

CanIBikeHere. "[Page Title]." canibikehere.com, 2026. Data source: USFS National Forest System Trails.