Best Bicycle Friendly Communities/Cities Rankings - Additional Insights?
#26
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I love Colorado!! Living else where isn't the same. Yes, we do have long winters with lots of snow. We go Cross Country Skiing or put the studs on the bike. The only problem about some parts of Colorado ( Boulder and Denver.) is the cost of living is high. Just about any place that you name has a down size of some type.
#27
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I chose to be bike only in Portland through college and afterward up to 10 years. I was younger and I was everywhere, from the Gorge in the east to Beaverton in the west, from Vancouver, Washington down to Oregon City, and trips out to the coast or sometimes further north. You've already read a lot of good stuff here. It's a city, you're going to be exposed. Sometimes you get a cushy bike lane, sometimes there's no lane or it's 2 feet wide & everybody's flying past you. There's risk every day, but you can minimize the risk by taking certain wider bike friendly roads that might make you ride a little further out of your way. To most people in the country it rains a lot there, but to me it was nothing. A great deal of those rainy days are just cloudy, which is nice & cool for biking. That said, you bring light rain gear & sunglasses. So much of it has to do with attitude. I could bike everywhere I wanted to go, but it involved risk and daily forgiveness. A big factor in riding there is that Portland wants to be a biking city and almost everyone there knows it, so vehicles and other bikers have this in mind as you travel together. Everybody's more mindful of cyclists. Now it should be said that the whole valley is aware of it, but the hardcore cycle lifestyle is mostly practiced on the east side of the city. You'll find dedicated cyclists all over the area, many ride from the west and south, but in the west the safest roads are mainly the arterial roads. Most people in West Pdx and Beaverton are tooling around in cars. On the east side you'll see cyclists on every road. The closer to downtown you go the more cyclists you'll see streaming in every direction. It's quite a beautiful sight imo (and I'm not bike-centric). It's a lifestyle for a lot of people in that area. Seems like most of your criteria are met there as far as I can determine, not knowing specifically where you want to go & how far from downtown you want to live. However it might not be protected enough for you or carefree enough. I don't know you. Maybe it would be easy for you coming from DC (I know I've driven like a nutjob there several times ; ). Portlanders are pretty ballsout about their biking...even the women. Many are agro about it. Bike-centric it definitely is, often intense. Also, all of the trains & buses regularly accept bikers with their bikes, and businesses usually accommodate you as well.