Davis, California: Best Bicycling Town in North America
For many New Yorkers it is difficult even to imagine a bike-friendly New York City. On a personal level, it hardly ever even ocurred to me that the bicycle could be an ideal form of urban transportation until I took a trip to Germany and saw it and experienced it for myself. I returned to New York City with a very different perspective on how our streets are designed and managed. In lieu of sending tens of thousands of New Yorkers to Northern Europe, Streetsblog will show images of bikeable cities as much as possible. Certainly every city is different and New York is extraordinarily unique in North America. But the more you see and experience the benefits of a bikeable city, the more I think you begin to ask yourself, “Why not here?”
Bicycling Magazine calls Davis, California the best bike town in North America:
This small city of 65,000 people has over 100 miles of bike lanes and bike paths (indeed, some claim that Davis was the first city in North America to create separate bike lanes). Bicycle infrastructure is everywhere – from bike shops to bike maps to artistic bike racks on the sidewalks. Most people here own bikes, and 17% of Davis residents commute to work on them. Davis even has a local Critical Mass group, though as my traveling companion said, CM seems a bit redundant here, as at least in the residential areas it’s hard to find any car traffic from which you could reclaim the streets in the first place.
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