America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities
Posted: April 7, 2010 at 7:42 amThis month’s Bicycling Magazine had a list of the top 50 cities in the USA for cycling. They were only able to give detailed write-ups on a select few of those, but have a web page with more info. Topping the list are the typical cities you expect to see on a list like this: Minneapolis, Portland and Boulder. At #11 is my soon-to-be home of Austin TX.
The Southeast in general did not do so well. Only a hand full of cities were listed, and poor Birmingham was listed as the nations worst city for cyclists.
Why is the South so bad in this respect? I think it has a lot to do with how cities were designed way back when. I’ve had several friends from the North comment on how spread out everything is when visiting here. Driving 20-30 minutes with no traffic to get somewhere “close” is considered normal. This led to a situation where having a car is almost mandatory which leads to few people calling for alternative transportation infrastructure. That’s my theory anyhow.
If your city didn’t make the list, how would you rank it among those that did?
