How’s the bike trails in your state/area?

24 comments

1. It’s all very location-dependent. Cities often lack dedicated bike routes due to lack of available land, rural areas often lack dedicated bike routes due to lack of necessity. Suburban areas near older industrial areas often have a strong network of bike routes due to high demand + and plenty of old defunct rail lines.

   I live outside of a small city in central Pennsylvania. I can cover a significant distance using a combination of paved bike paths and residential neighborhood streets. Getting to a specific destination via bike-friendly routes can be much more difficult.

   Example: “I can get to a town 50 miles away using only bike paths and suburban residential streets” is a different statement from “I can get to work and to the grocery store using only bike paths and suburban residential streets”.

2. Indiana. I think they are pretty good. We have road and dirt trails. We have the Monon trail that goes from downtown Indianapolis, 10th street to near Sheridan, 236th street. According to maps it ends in Westfield, but a friend and I took it all the way to Sheridan. I live West of Indianapolis and my town had a road trail here. I am sure there are more road trails, but those are the only ones I know of.

   We have a good amount of dirt trails around central Indiana and Brown County Park has some great trails.

3. Honestly, we have a great system of bike trails

   There was a lot of investments in bike trails throughout the mid-2000s in Michigan. And a lot of local governments have started collaborating with one another to connect their trails so you go from small town to small town

   They are generally well paved, clean, safe, and often there are art sculptures from local artists

4. Indiana is expanding a lot of trails but I think we still have a way to go compared to OH and NY where you can mostly go from one end to the other on separate dedicated trails

5. I am in Columbia mo and the bike trails within the city are phenomenal- they are well kept up, go all throughout the city, and are well used. One could also bike to st. Louis or to Kansas City on the Katy trail if they were so inclined

6. We have almost 2500 miles of rail-to-trail bicycle (and walking) trails in the state.

7. We have one in my area but it’s a good path and stretches quite a bit.

8. It’s OK, but also the general layout is pretty amenable to bicycling without separated paths.

   There are a few proper off-street bike paths that I’ve found useful though. I used to use the Ohlone Greenway and the bay trail (not fully continuous but covers 350 miles circumnavigating SF bay) for a big chunk of a 15 mile bike commute I was doing a few times a week for a previous job. At least with respect to my immediate surroundings of Oakland and Berkeley is pretty easy to get most anywhere using low traffic streets and bike ways. The biggest limitations are the bay on the west and the hills on the east. Can ride over the hills, but it’s all steep, windy residential roads. Easy to avoid traffic without separated bike trails. Once you drop into the suburban inland towns to the east there is a decent network of off-street paths.

9. I don’t think this is the same thing, because I can’t get anywhere on bike without getting on a highways but.. NJ has the 2nd highest % of land dedicated to parks and wildlife in the country, behind Alaska. There’s nature preserves all over the place, and the state keeps buying up land to connect them, which is pretty neat, IMO. The trails on them are well maintained, usually just packed earth but not many potholes or anything

   ​

   [NJ is second in the US for most land dedicated to parks, wildlife (njherald.com)](https://www.njherald.com/story/news/new-jersey/2021/06/04/nj-second-united-states-land-dedicated-parks-wildlife/7473533002/)

10. We have some good trails for leisure, but not much that’s usable for actual transportation.

11. Hit and miss.

    The Bay Area has pockets of bike infrastructure that rival infrastructure anywhere else in the world, but there are massive glaring gaps in the network.

    If your goal is to find a trail to ride on for exercise, you have tons of fantastic options. If your goal is to use a bicycle as a means of transportation, there are going to be lots of trips where the ride is uncomfortable and dangerous.

12. Pretty good in the Seattle area. There are a lot of bike lanes in the city and some good trails. In my opinion the best trails for long pleasure rides are out in the more rural areas. My main barrier to biking everywhere is the hills. Mostly avoidable if you’re just biking for fun, but if I need to get to a specific place, I’d likely arrive very sweaty.

13. In NH we got hella trails, not really ones that’s go too far but the scenery is amazing and you’ll see some fun dudes along the way, just make sure to call out which direction your passing me on haha don’t want to fall in and lose my fishing rod

14. Both the city I work in and the one I live in have bike trails that run in a circle around pretty much the whole city. There are a few areas where they skipped it because it wouldn’t be very safe. But you can easily bike in a loop around the whole city if you’re willing to detour through some neighborhoods.

15. Outdoor activity (even biking) is pretty popular in the Bay.

16. Iced over.

17. I’m from rural Ohio we had a bike/horse ttail that went through 3 small towns. The area I’m in in Florida doesn’t have as many but biking on the streets is pretty common

18. Pretty decent in Chicago, but not a patch on Sioux Falls. The SF bike trail system is a big part of why I’ve been a lifelong cyclist.

19. Shite

20. I live in Colorado, and we have three cities that have really great bike trails:

    [Fort Collins](https://www.fcgov.com/bicycling/files/21-23544-2021-fort-collins-bike-map-large-english-v7.pdf?1640787288)

    [Boulder](https://assets.bouldercounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/boulder-county-bike-map.pdf) (the map here is for Boulder County)

    [Denver](https://denvergov.org/files/assets/public/doti/documents/bicycles/2019-denver-bike-map.pdf)

    Outside of these cities, most have bike gutters in the shoulders of their roads, but bike infrastructure is mostly pretty laking.

21. Most major towns and cities have a few trails. Usually along a creek or river

22. Look into the Empire State Trail. It goes all the way from Buffalo to NYC. It’s become one of the premier bikepacking routes in the nation. Lots of charming canal towns every 15 miles or so and a large city every 75.

23. Poor recently they have make some improvements but there are some others that are pure stupidity, how can you share the road to bike in 45 mph limit area ?

24. We have the Katy Trail, part of what was the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. It’s pretty sweet and is about 240 miles long. St. Louis has been building sections of paths (Great River Greenways) that either connect or will eventually. 128 miles so far. They’re wonderful!