From the Chicagoist blog:
Here’s the entire top 10:
1. Minneapolis
2. Portland
3. Boulder
4. Seattle
5. Eugene
6. San Francisco
7. Madison
8. New York
9. Tuscon
10. ChicagoThe magazine cited Mayor Daley’s enthusiasm for cycling, a growing network of bike lanes, and amenities like valet bike parking and indoor bike racks as its reasons for including Chicago at number 10. It also considered availability of bike racks, bike culture and bike shops, the opinions of national and local advocates and experts, and the Bicycling and Walking in the United States 2010 Benchmarking Report.
One Comment
Hey, I’m not an expert on such things, but I feel like most of Chicago is a hideous, dangerous place to ride a bike. Most of the bike lanes in this town are about 7 inches wide and ignored by nearly all cars and buses.
It’s true that they at least bothered to paint the bike lanes in, and you can theoretically strap your bike in to the front of a city bus (but I’m kinda cold on the idea after seeing that video of the cyclist getting run over and killed while removing his bike).
Isn’t there a plan to turn that unused elevated train line into a cross-city bike path? That would be sweet.
Even better, turn two lanes every 15 blocks or so into bike-only roads. I don’t see that happening, but who would have guessed that Daley would have pulled off turning that railyard between the Loop and the lake into a huge and awesome city park with giant metalwork by Gehry et al.?