John9

Any road riders in the Novi / Walled Lake area? I'm new to the area and am looking for routes and/or bike friendly roads, which seem to be lacking around here. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have a car rack, so I am open to traveling around Metro Detroit / Ann Arbor/ Brighton in order to find some good routes. Thanks!

Jim from Boston

I don’t know the Oakland suburbs well for cycling, but I have always thought that area might be good for cycling if you can find good routes, The architectural critic of the Boston Globe once described Southfield, MI as the “City of Towers and Cars,” in contrast to Boston as the "City of Outdoor Rooms."If you are willing to travel:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

Looking for Detroit area casual ride

Though I have lived in Boston for many years, I’m a native of Detroit City Proper, and most of the family is in Macomb and Oakland Counties. I visit a couple times a year, with my bike, and I made the acquaintance of the Clinton River Riders.

Detroit Proper has been touted as having a good cycling infrastructure, wide roads with diminished traffic, See this thread, “Riding through Detroit,”

Quote:

Originally Posted by oddjob2

I have lived in southeastern Michigan since 1982, 30 years in Ann Arbor, and 5 in Grosse Pointe. I have been sailing with Bayview Yacht Club, at the foot of Conner, since 1987.

Never did I think I would ride a bike or have any interest in downtown Detroit until about 2011. Now I ride through Jefferson Chalmers to Bayview without a thought.

Since living in GP, I have Slow Rolled, visited Belle Isle, River Walk, Comerica Park on opening day, Mexican Town, Midtown, Indian Village, Corktown, Eastern Market, and New Center, via bike.

During daylight hours, I would say there are NO concerns of riding west to east between Mexican Town all the way to Grosse Pointe. I would avoid being on the road before 9:00 am or 4:00-5:30 pm to avoid commuters....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

...for a few years I lived in the Cass Corridor, and cycled down around there. I used to consider the Grosse Pointes as a public cycling park.

IMO, Ann Arbor and vicinity is a cycling mecca.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

...Back in the 60’s in the Motor City, I had an “English Racer,’ and longed to tour at about age 14, but then joined the car culture. In Ann Arbor MI in the 70’s I really realized the utility of bicycles for commuting, and began touring on a five-speed Schwinn Suburban

Finally, when I want to do a long ride without much traffic, the Metroparks Stony Creek and Kensington Lake have nice circuits of several miles, to repeat.

oddjob2

rm -rf

Google Maps set to Bicycling shows trails, bike lanes and bike friendly roads. It appears that the dotted "bicycle friendly roads" are selected by google map users that have map editing permissions. My local area shows some bike friendly roads that are very steep (but low traffic). And some are busy highways that I would avoid. But most of the bike friendly roads are rideable.

A link to Novi area google maps bicycling. You have to zoom in to see the green dotted friendly roads. Zoom way in to see the bike trail names repeated down their green line.
xhttps://www.google.com/maps/@42.4738415,-83.5095443,13z/data=!5m1!1e3
(Bikeforums tries to show this in-line, but then it doesn't show bike data. copy and paste this without the x in front of https. Or just go to your local Google Maps and select Bicycling from the left side pulldown.

Strava Heat Map
This is my first choice for locating routes in unfamiliar areas. It's two years of uploaded strava GPS recordings, color coded by popularity.
Some of these "roads" are mountain bike trails. Some are gravel roads. And a few popular roads might be the best way out of town, but annoying to ride.
Novi Strava Heat Map. Click the Labels button to see town and road names. Click the bicycle icon at Activity Type, the link reverts back to "all".

Strava Route Builder
This uses the Heat Map data to route you on popular roads. Click a starting point, and intermediate points, it picks reasonably good roads. Much better than Google Maps, which usually takes the most direct route. You need a free Strava login to make routes.
Route Builder

fishboat

Search Ride With GPS, or (I assume..haven't used it), Map My Ride. On RWGPS click on "Find"on top, enter a location and distance radius on the left, scroll down and click Search.. anyone with public routes (typically LOTS) will come up. You can copy their rides to your own profile, export them....etc... You can also create your own routes(free) ..the site has video tutorials. Very nice tool.

friday1970

My reply:
Novi and Walled Lake suck for bike riding. No shoulders, and high traffic. Doing loops around Walled Lake isn't too bad. But I can imagine the scenery getting old quickly.

Thankfully, you have paved routes going West and South.
For the south route, you can start at Novi's Walsh College on Meadowbrook and catch the I275 Trail to Hines Drive. This part of the trail is starting to need repaving, especially between 6 mile and M14. But it's not too bad. Once at Hines Drive, you can tour Hines. Even more, as you pass on Hines under I275, you can pick up the Southern part of the I275 trail. Very smooth, fast, and takes you to the Lower Huron, Willow, and Oakwoods Metroparks.
For the Western Route, Pontiac Trail has a nice shoulder into Wixom from Walled Lake, where you can pick up the rail trail to New Hudson. From there, South to South Lyon, or West to Kensington Metro Park and and Island Lake State Parks. To South Lyon, the rail trail is a bit rough. Pretty smooth to the MetroParks (except for the rough hill going through the park just West of New Hudson).
And after Island Lake state park, you can catch the trail from JC Penny's down Feldcrest (along US23) to M36 and catch the Lakeland Rail Trail into Pinckney.

All depends on how ambitious you are. But, there are spots to ride.

I should also mention the crushed stone trail from Haggarty (just south of Pontail Trail) which leads to Pontiac Michigan. I wouldn't go that far, as the closer you get to Pontiac, the more aggressive the local behavior is towards cyclists.

Jim from Boston

See also this recent post (link) on the Fifty-Plus Forum about a long-standing organized ride in the Ann Arbor area on July 14, by the Ann Arbor Bicycling Touring Society.