Top 5 Bike-Friendly Cities

Most Bike-Friendly Cities

1) Portland, OR
Portland is the #1 bike city in the USA and arguably North America. Portland has not only added bike lanes, but they have built bike-specific pathways and bridges that connect the neighborhoods, allowing for bikers to completely avoid motorized traffic altogether in some cases.

Biking in Portland accounts for up to 9% of all commuter traffic, which is very impressive, considering being in the automobile-centric United States.

2) Washington, DC
Bikers strolling down the streets of Washington enjoy liberty and equal rights. The city recently embarked on a bike lane program that aims to provide 5 miles of bike lanes and another 5 miles of shared lanes. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2012.

There are a number of bike rental shops; such as the one at Union Station for example that let people rent bikes.

3) Seattle, WA
Biking doesn’t get much better than in beautiful Seattle. Biking in Seattle is an absolute must, next to the water, the surrounding area around Seattle offers absolutely breathtaking views.

4) Minneapolis, MN
Also known as the City of Lakes, Minneapolis offers amazing views for your bike riding. And unlike being in a car, you can much more easily stop and take in the surroundings.

On Minneapolis’s main website, they have a section dedicated to bicyclists.

Minneapolis has a good mix of bike lanes as well as shared lanes. To encourage more people to bike they have provided plentiful, safe and secure areas for people to park their bikes. One special program they have is that the city will pay half of the cost of installing a new bike rack at eligible businesses schools and other public places.

Also provided for both residents and visitors is a bike sharing program. People can check out bikes for short trips.

You’ll enjoy 168 miles of bikeways.

5) Austin, TX
It’s the training grounds for Lance Armstrong and for good reason. With miles and miles of relatively low-traffic roads, entire armies of cycling groups sometimes take to the outlying country roads around Austin.

Riding out on one of the many wide open roads is blissful and the sky is seemingly endless, with streaks of white stretching out across as though from the brush of Bob Ross himself.