In Platinum City Even the Munchkins Ride Bikes

With New York City recently scoring a bronze medal for urban bike-friendliness from the League of American Bicyclists, we figured it was a good time to post our 8 minute StreetFilm on Davis, California, where I visited this summer. Portland, Oregon is nipping at their heels, but Davis is still the only city in America yet to attain LAB’s Platinum award.

Credit for Davis’s bike-friendliness goes back to the 1960’s when forward-thinking University of California, Davis urban planners began thinking about ways to make it safe and convenient for college students and city residents to travel safely by bike. During an era when most California towns were focused on building freeways, strip malls and suburban arterials, Davis’s planning wizards were developing off-street greenways, bike lanes and installing bike racks everywhere.

In the last decade, an influx of car-commuters moving to Davis from nearby Sacramento and San Francisco has decreased the bike commuting mode share from 25 percent to 18 percent. Still, Davis remains an amazing place to use a bike for transportation. Any place that has that many children riding bikes is doing something right!

And check this out — Davis has its own Wiki page devoted to bicycling.

Now click your heels four times and repeat after me, “There’s no place like Davis. There’s no place like Davis. There’s no place…”