Davis, California: Best Bicycling Town in North America

11:24 AM EDT on July 11, 2006

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.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

Stay in touch

More from Streetsblog New York City

Congestion Pricing

Stockholm Leader’s Message to NYC: ‘Congestion Pricing Just Works’

"In Stockholm, people really thought that congestion pricing would be the end of the world, the city will come to a standstill, no one would be able to get to work anymore and all the theaters and shops would just go bankrupt. None of that happened."