BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

i was a little peeved with getting #35. can't remember what the city was right before pgh, but they're claims to fame were bike lanes and racks. pittsburgh has lots of that, but i guess they see charm as a downside.

creative installation of infrastructure and charm for the win!

Well, we used to fit in the addendum they sometiems put on "Best Bicycling Cities" list: "Worst cycing cities."

I don't think we were ever the very worst in the country, but we were close.

Maybe we're being docked points for hills. I hear stories of DC-area cyclists coming to Pittsburgh and being stunned by the topology.

Having been to some of the other places I am shocked we are not a little higher than that. Maybe it is the hills. Does that make us better cyclists? Imagine how much faster we would all be in the other cities?

@parvpica, Miami was #34. Which is amazing, because it's flat there, you can easily cycle year round, and there's the beach. They must have broken glass everywhere, no bike lanes, and hostile drivers shooting at cyclists.

If it's surprising that we're not higher, my guess is that it's because of a hidden silver lining - other smaller American cities similar to Pgh, that don't get big headlines and don't make the news, have been making FAST progress in bike friendliness. Indianapolis, Columbus, Nashville, Knoxville, etc., huge. Pretty fantastic and heartwarming.

Their rankings have a lot to do with momentum and progress. Pittsburgh's progress is slow and steady and certainly secondary to cars. I have a feeling we will be ranked higher next year after the bike corrals are in, the Hazlewood section of Eliza Furnace is complete and the GAP is connected.

@rsprake after the bike corrals are in, the Hazlewood section of Eliza Furnace is complete and the GAP is connected.

I'll certainly rank the city higher when those things are done!

What's most disappointing is we slipped 7 spots from where we were two years in a row.

@scott we slipped 7 spots from where we were two years in a row.

In a way, that's good news. We haven't gotten worse, for sure. The hills are not even an inch higher, we have more trails and less harassment. Local government is somewhat responsive to our concerns.

More improvement in more cities, though. Good news all 'round.

I like Mick's take - we didn't get worse, other cities got better faster. I think it's also incentive to get the local in-charges who may think they can rest on their laurels (10 miles of one way bike lanes in a year, iirc) to keep going.

We wanna tout our awesome cycling infrastructure support? We best move faster, 'cause the bandwagon is gonna leave us behind.

&ldquo To determine our top 50 bike-friendly cities for 2012, we evaluated cities with populations of 95,000 or more, using data provided by the Alliance for Biking and Walking and the League of American Bicyclists, as well as input from local advocates and bike-ped coordinators. To make the list, a city must possess both a robust cycling infrastructure and a vibrant bike culture. Read on to find out how your city stacks up. —Ian Dille &rdquo

I've clicked on a lot other cities. I've found that stuff mentioned as "claim to fame" is already exists in Pittsburgh, e.g. Free Ride, Rides -- we have almost daily rides with a lot of clubs, there are special rides 101, lots of shares, lots of trails, etc. I don't know if info about stuff has been communicated to the magazine, or even how the magazine get its info.

Do they take into account "centralized message board where any cyclist can get a detailed, honest answer quickly about any cycling question"? If they did, we would be WAY up there.

Yeah, whenever I search for something like this for other cities, I can't find one.

@edmonds, since the main two places where I lived prior to moving here were Nashville and Knoxville, I think those are really interesting ones to point out.

When I was in Knoxville earlier this month I saw a grand total of two bikes and one badass cargo trike on the road out in the suburbs over the course of about three days—it's still not a lot, but it's probably almost as many bikes as I remember seeing on the road basically the entire decade or so that I spent growing up there. Knoxville looks a lot like Pittsburgh in some areas (defined by the river and the hills). The older, less sprawled city center is making faster progress, but the insanely sprawled suburbs are slowly but surely making some progress too, although it's more in terms of recreational greenway stuff and less in terms of routes useful for transit. I still wouldn't ride out in the suburbs there, and Knoxville (at least in the suburbs) is still the single most car-dependent place I've ever seen in my life, but I'm really interested to see what happens in the long run.

Then again, for the past 5-7 years (or maybe longer), the high school I went to has been trying just to get sidewalks built so that the students who live within a mile of the school can walk to school safely without literally walking in the road, and their proposals have been absolutely rejected over and over again, so I'm not THAT optimistic about the city planning endeavors there. And if you think PAT is bad, check out the KAT bus system. So yeah, I'll be staying out of Tennessee for a while if I can help it. Even at #35, compared to a lot of those smaller cities that should theoretically be similar, Pittsburgh is decades ahead.

ETA: Stu seriously makes a good point. Seriously, the existence of something like this can make a real difference for someone like me who was new to the city and new to cycling.

ETA(2): Nashville is a whole other story. I think it has a better outlook than Knoxville due to having more actual urban area and due to already being more bike-friendly, but as appeared in another thread at some point, it has some weird stuff going on with the various little towns and things that have been incorporated into the city, or not incorporated, etc., leading to some serious sprawl and planning issues. But for someone living near the city center and/or around one of the major universities there, cycling can at least be a semi-legitimate form of transit.

Interesting we dropped. Been cycling here for many years. It is better cycling now than ever in Pittsburgh. Every bus has a rack and there are more bike lanes and more trails than ever. I find it surprising we dropped and makes me wonder about the credibility of this ranking.

No need to wonder. Rankings such as these don't come from people who go around and ride a bike in each city.

Percentage of the transit fleet equipped with bike racks... sorry I missed it but was that a contributory statistic?

Maybe they're anticipating us being down to one bus driving back and forth between Downtown and Squirrel Hill next year.

No more busses or access vans could be considered a check in the box towards being bike friendly to some.

here's the list although it's a pain to navigate (one of the comments says they're redesigning it): http://www.bicycling.com/news/advocacy/america-s-top-50-bike-friendly-cities

I don't put too much stock in these kinds of things, but... reading between the lines a bit - encourage your employers to apply for LAB "bike friendly business" status... assuming they're actually bike friendly, of course, the league is pretty strict about their guidelines.

orizon06- i've only ridden in a flat city once, Buffalo, and it was awesome. i felt way more fit and faster than i ever have in pgh and i was passing everybody by. i had no idea where i was going, but i was gettin' there in a hurry! as much as i loathe the hills most of the time, i wouldn't want to live somewhere that didn't have descents. sweet downhill plummets that make your eyes tear up are important for my well-being.

> sweet downhill plummets that make your eyes tear up are important for my well-being.

x1000 !!!

Everybody subscribe to Bicycling Magazine!!! No doubt this somehow worked into their figures too.

@salty

I think that "poor" design is intentional. From the standpoint of advertising, it allows them to show us waaay more of it and slow us down from actually acquiring the information we want.

I rank them #36 in my list of websites that have lists.

@erok hah, my thoughts exactly. can't wait to see where LLBean rates us.

I am subscribed. Did not help.

the soon-to-be-completed GAP trail which will stretch 335 miles to DC.

The Sandcastle GAP Gap: "Soon-to-be-completed, 3 years in a row!"

If I knew how to post a picture I could show you why Kansas City beat out PGH. Went back home last week and was amazed at how wide the lanes were. Easily a car width and a half for each lane, 4 lanes with a raised grass median almost everywhere.

That is in most of KC outside of downtown but even down town has nice big lanes and the grid layout makes navigating it a breeze. It is however not nearly as flat as people claim it to be.

Kansas City

Acouple of years ago on this board someone posted a quote from a Missouri city (K.C.? St L? I forget.) bike forum where someone was saying they couldn't have the bike infrastructure that some other cities have because their streets were too wide.

Made my jaw drop.

@Mick: I had to read that twice.

Am I right in parsing this to be roughly equivalent to saying:

"I would give to your charitable organization, but I have too much money"?

I can see how it would be hard to argue the need for dedicated lanes when you can have a cyclist riding next to the curb, theres not really any street parking to worry about, and can still have a car pass with few to spare in the same lane. Road condition is FANTASTIC in almost all of the KC metro area, especially on the KS side. Most roads have 6' blacktop sidewalks on both sides of the road as well.

hunh... so how did KC get it right?

edited to clarify: can we learn from their success? Have we already and we're just fighting different battles?

The business of super-wide streets has to be set up when they first start making streets. We're about 200 years too late.

Most "new" cities have wide streets.

It's only a matter of time before more streets receive the East Liberty Boulevard treatment or better.

Do you guys think something like this would work in PGH with the terrain?

http://www.kansascity.bcycle.com/

Yes. From downtown alone you have easy access to the strip, lawrenceville, north side and south side.

I know there was a thread on this when Bike Pgh brought in the bike share folks (I think it may even have been B-Cycle). Having finally visited a city with a bike share program, you need A LOT of stations to make it useful. And ideally to residential areas too. Agree with rsprake that it could be used in those areas below the "east end plateau" and surrounding hills. (and hopefully soon all the way into Homestead.)

@parvpica, Miami was #34. Which is amazing, because it's flat there, you can easily cycle year round, and there's the beach. They must have broken glass everywhere, no bike lanes, and hostile drivers shooting at cyclists.

A friend of mine was considering moving to Miami. She brought her bicycle and could barely ride anywhere. Think long, straight streets all with 50+ mph speed limits and no shoulder.

And we're behind THAT?

I don't know if it's really that bad. When I was in Miami I saw a lot of people riding bikes, bike lanes and loads of people using the bus racks.

In the end, it is Bicycle Magazine. This is not a peer reviewed journal, it is basically the state of most magazines you'll find at B&N as an advertisement catalog.

A bit OT, but Bike-Pgh, Lou, and Whole Foods got a nice shout out in the LAB's Mar/Apr magazine (I'm perpetually behind reading magazines). See "Cranks of Commerce" on page 21:

http://issuu.com/bikeleague/docs/ab-mar-apr2012-forweb/25

also a bit OT, but this month's bicycling magazine reviews steel bikes, which made me so happy. it's always $8000 carbon whatsits in most of the magazine, but this time they have a look at some more fun, reasonable stuff. also, bike snob's little article about the tour de france is a good time.