vilago

Hi All. I have been car-free for about 10 years now, living in DC proper for most of that time. We moved out of town during the pandemic to the DE beach area. We still stayed car-free this past year of the pandemic but living outside of a metropolitan area has made travel outside of town more difficult, at least, more difficult than DC was.

Work seems to be open to the idea of me staying remote, so in light of our experiences in DE vs DC, we are using this new opportunity to do a little research and find a bike friendly(er) community that best serves our needs. Most importantly:


1) Bike Friendly. Not just bike-friendly but bike-centric, should such a thing even exist in north america... And to be clear I mean on road biking primarily. I would like to be able to get to all/most of anything i would need by bike in a protected, free/low stress environment, grocery, bars, venues, airport, parks, etc.

2) Good public transportation, bus, rail etc. is a must.

3) Some way to get to the airport without a car, hopefully an international airport. Rail would be preferred or express bus shuttle.


With all that said, I started by looking at the rankings of communities on the bike league website and it ranks the following as platinum communities:


Davis CA , Boulder CO, Fort Collins CO, Portland OR, Madison WI


I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone who has experience with biking in any of these or other communities that might be better than DC who can provide insight?

Any other suggestions of places I should be looking at? How is the public transit in these or your suggested community? Do the bikelanes that exist get you to established, popular destinations or do they simply end with no rhyme or reason? Obviously a protected bike lane is great but if it doesn't get you to any interesting places, or ends suddenly in a busy road, it is less useful.


I did read that Portland has been noted as a standout for some years now, and their engineering/facility ranking is the highest at 6.5 so that was one place high on the list. Unfortunately I don't have much experience biking outside DC so no frame of reference, and don't know what makes Portland great. DC ranks as a gold city, but to be honest, it needs a LOT of work to get it where I think it should be. This makes me question just how meaningful a higher ranking really is. Obviously none of these communities compare to somewhere like Oslo or Copenhagen, at least to the best of my knowledge.


If there are any neighborhoods or districts in communities not mentioned in the report that could be hidden gems, that would be of interest also.


Thanks in advance for your insight.