by Tom Bastek
Last updated: 7:00 AM ET, Sat February 14, 2015
Photos courtesy of wikipedia.org.
Bicycling has grown exponentially over the last 20 years and along with it, the facilities, awareness, technology and infrastructure have as well. Today, renting a bike by the day or week is second nature for most travelers. Here are a few of the best destinationos for getting around on two wheels.
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, which has a bunch of great things already going for it (craft beer anyone?) also happens to be incredibly bike-friendly. Over 95 percent of the arterials roadways have bike lanes or trails on them. Their bike share program, Boulder B-cycle has 38 stations with 250 bikes and the city itself spends about 15 percent of its overall transportation budget on bicycle traffic each year. The government starts education early with programs like their Boulder Safe Routes to School program.
Portland, Oregon
Portland's Bureau of Transportation is pretty serious about biking in the city with their Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 calling for more than a quarter of all trips to be made by bicycle by 2030. They maintain a vast amount of interactive bike / walk / transit maps on their website and even offers maps for destination to destination routes. For instance they offer two mapped routes from the airport to downtown, one direct route and one with less traffic. They offer a good resource for bike rentals should you not be bringing your own. Bike share is in the works and looks promising with some regional funding already approved. They folks over at bikeportland.org are another local resource that offer up to date information on what is going on in the bicycling community in Portland and also has a tracker for stolen bikes as well.
San Francisco, California
There are 63 miles of paths and lanes throughout the city of San Francisco and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition not only offers maps, classes and resources for biking in the area, but also lobbies the government in bicycling favor. Bay Area Bike Share is the region's bike sharing system with 700 bikes and 70 stations across the city and around the region. Just the commuting traffic on bike alone tells you about bicycling in the state: 40,000 residents commute regularly by bike! You can always find someone in this city that is on a bike, owns a bike, or has a bicycling answer to your questions.
New York / New England
Lake Champlain Bikeways is a group of 1,300 miles of bike routes that span Vermont, New York and Quebec containing loops, tours, plus a major 363 mile main trail that loops the lake. Bicyclists can experience, "peaceful country roads, picturesque villages, breathtaking scenery, charming B&B's and inns, country stores and farm stands, bicycle tour outfitters, impressive historic sites and museums, lovely shoreline parks and campgrounds, convenient connections to passenger rail lines and ferry crossings, and access to numerous lakes and rivers."
Wow if that isnt a mouthful! If you want to sepnd a little extra time on the Vermont side the Green Mountain Bicycle Club has some fantastic resources for those who are coming to Vermont to do some biking.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Now I am not going to say that in the winter in Minnesota you want to be anywhere on your bike, but I will say that the rest of the year, you can't get much more bike-friendly than Minneapolis. As of last year, Minneapolis has 118 miles of on-street bikeways and 92 miles of off street bikeways.
The bike share program there runs from April to November and has a fleet of 1,550 bicycles and 170 stations in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. If there is one thing you can say about these folks from the snowy north, they certainly love their summers outside.
Many, many other cities have incredible bike share and bike rental facilities and great infrastructure. What is your favorite? Let me know and we can bike the next five together!
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