Over the past decade, cities around the globe have embraced cycling like never before. Streets once dominated by cars are now alive with two-wheeled commuters, cargo bikes delivering goods, and families riding to school. The Copenhagenize Index, the most comprehensive ranking of urban cycling friendliness, evaluates 100 cities on how far they’ve gone to make cycling safe, convenient, and appealing—from protected lanes and bike boulevards to parking garages and bikeshare programs.

The Cycle to Work Scheme is an employee benefit scheme set up by the government in 1999 that enables employers to ‘hire’ bikes and safety equipment to employees through salary sacrifice.

The aim of the scheme is to get more people to commute to work by bike, promoting exercise while reducing pollution.

The authors of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, used data from Google to determine walking and cycling rates in 11,587 cities in 121 countries, a far larger sample size than in any previous research. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they found that cities with lots of cyclists and pedestrians tend to be dense and filled with bike lanes.

The authors also found that higher gas prices meaningfully increase national walking and cycling rates. “You need carrots and sticks,” says John Pucher, an emeritus urban transportation researcher at Rutgers University, who was not involved in the study. “You need incentives for cycling and walking [combined with] disincentives to car use.”