11 Most Bike Friendly Cities

CommuterPageBlog points us to Virgin Vacations list of the 11 Most Bicycle friendly cities in the World. Here's the list:

1. Amsterdam, Netherlands
2. Portland, Oregon
3. Copenhagen, Denmark
4. Boulder, Colorado
5. Davis, California
6. Sandnes, Norway
7. Trondheim, Norway
8. San Francisco, California
9. Berlin, Germany
10. Barcelona, Spain
11. Basel, Switzerland

You'll note that 4 of the 11 are American Cities. So I don't want to hear anymore of that "Americans are too _____ to adopt good biking policy" stuff.  We can run with the big boys.

CPB also has a post in response to an article in the Arlington Connection entitled Nirvana on Wheels about whether or not Arlington is a bicycle friendly city.

ASK NEARLY ANY county official whether Arlington is a bike-friendly community and they’ll respond in the affirmative.

They’ll cite the county’s 24 miles of on-street bike lanes, 46 miles of off-street trails and 43 miles of signed bike routes. They’ll point to the numerous county-funded programs that seek to encourage bike use and the multitude of resources Arlington offers to its cyclists.

Comments

[icon o'classt]

What Arlington Co. officials WON'T point to is the sad absence of enforcement when it comes to parking in or otherwise blocking bike lanes (cops are often the culprits. Still, the county is making headway.

I rank it well past "bike tolerant", but a bit shy of "bike friendly". This is the county and its polices I'm talking about, not the motorists who live or drive through the area. They still get an F.

[Jan]

Yes, sad enforcement on the hills of Military Rd in North Arlington, with huge leaf piles all stuffed up on the bike lane. Even worse after it rains.

[Nancy]

What do officials know about biking? Do any of them actually bike? Why not ask the bikers how bike-friendly Arlington is?

The leaf problem is just as bad in Bethesda. Apparently, no one can read the posted signs saying to keep leaves out of the street, and no one has any common sense. Some of the piles are so huge they take up a whole "lane" or half the roadway. Duh!

[Allen Muchnick]

In Arlington, homeowners are instructed to rake leaves into curbside piles on the roadway for vacuum-truck pickup during November and December. The leaf piles should be confined to the parking lanes, not spill into the bike lanes.

I personally have no problem, however, when Arlington's largely unnecessary doorzone bike lanes are temporarily obstructed by leaf piles or parked cars.

I, and several other Arlington bicyclists, did tell the Connection reporter that Arlington County government is not all that bike friendly, but most of what we said wasn't printed.

For example, in nearly 14 years since the County Board adopted the 1994 Arlington Bicycle Transportation Plan, not even one County-initiated trail network expansion project has been completed. Also, the County Board is pursuing a Columbia Pike Streetcar boondoogle that would install treacherous trolley tracks in the curb lanes of South Arlington's main street, despite the general lack of continuous parallel through streets in the corridor.

Arlington's "bike friendliness" is primarily due to its urban-core location and pre-WWII development history. Furthermore, Arlington's Mt Vernon, Custis, and W&OD Trails were built by federal, state, and regional agencies, not by County government.

The County is good about requiring bike parking facilities in new buildings and in providing signed routes, bike lanes, and maps, but these are all low-hanging fruit.

Besides no real emphasis on traffic law enforcement, the County lacks written policies for bicycle-actuation of traffic signals or for winter maintenance of shared-use paths. Being "bike-friendly" in relation to Fairfax County or even Alexandria is nothing to brag about.

[Ren]

Now that I live near one, I’ve become more aware of how many traffic signals lack bicycle-actuation. I just sit there pathetically and hope a car eventually shows up.

I no longer live near Columbia Pike, so I, luckily, don’t have to ride it anymore. However, my favorite was the cop who sat there many mornings snagging people who grossly endangered safety by driving through the Eckerd (now Rite Aid) parking lot. I always fantasized that one day, he would be assigned to ride a bicycle down Columbia Pike and pull over drivers who seemed to want to kill bicyclists.

Definitely agree that Arlington could do more and being better than Fairfax and stop-sign-loving Alexandria is nothing to brag about.