Is cycling popular where you live?

30 comments

1. Much more popular as recreation, sport, and exercise than basic transportation

2. For recreation, quite popular. Mountain biking especially for obvious reasons.

3. It is popular however- you can’t do it just anywhere. The roads (and drivers) are often unfriendly and unsafe to cyclists. There are popular trails for cycling. And certain spots (esp downtown) that have bike lanes on the roads.

   If you live in very select areas you could use it for transportation (barring weather), but generally you wouldn’t see that. My area is extremely car dependent.

4. Tons of mountain biking and rail trail biking.

   Nearly zero bicycle infrastructure in my county for commuting, the city’s main streets have bike lanes but that was placed 25+ years ago and people usually just park in them.

5. It’s very popular on all fronts where I live. In Eugene Oregon and we have a tremendous amount of infrastructure that makes it easier and more appealing to get around by bike. We are also surrounded by hills and bike paths that people ride on recreationally.

   Even so, if you asked the average person here about our infrastructure for biking, they will still probably say it isn’t enough, and I kind of agree.

6. oh my god yes. both for exercise and transport

7. I bump into cyclists from time to time, but mostly on recreational trails

8. For transportation, no. For exercise yes, some on the road but also on trails.

9. It’s very popular for recreation where I live. Minneapolis has consistently been named one of the best biking cities in the US.

10. Mountain biking, yes, extremely

11. Somewhat popular for recreation, and as transportation for children. Unpopular for adult transportation. I live in a suburban area, where bicycling for transportation is very often impractical, unsafe, and unpleasant.

    Bicycling for transportation is much more common in cities, but still much less popular than driving or using public transportation (where available/ practical).

12. More popular as recreation than transit.

    You see a lot of kids on bikes but if you see an adult on one outside of a nice trail or a big grouo the assumption isn’t “oh they like to bike” it’s “oh they lost their license or can’t afford a car”.

13. Not at all. Some people ride bikes, but the city isn’t at all set up for them. Our bike lanes are skinny, randomly disappear, and expect you to be directly next to (or merging into the middle of) traffic. It feels very very dangerous. I can’t even bike to the grocery store without having to cross a busy four lane road.

14. Pretty popular for transport and recreation, but most people have an ebike for commuting because of hills.

15. Yes and I hate it. No one knows the rules for cyclists, including the cyclists and it causes lots of accidents. Too many cars and traffic to cycle safely here.

16. No, much too dangerous unless you drive to a trail. The roads and drivers are unfriendly to cyclists. Two friends were killed one got hit on the back of his head by one of those extended mirrors they use for pickup trucks pulling trailers. The other died when he was crossing a railroad crossing, he fell when he hit a track and fell into an oncoming car.

    Both of these would not happen if we had separate lanes for bikes instead we have to share the streets together with cars.

17. Where I live (suburban, somewhat hilly area) there are some kids who go around cycling but there aren’t many people who bike to work or school. Recreational/off-road biking is pretty popular in the mountains and hills around here, and in some coastal/denser areas it’s more common to see bicyclists out and about.

18. Almost entirely for exercise and recreation. I live in a suburb of Los Angeles where it’s normal to commute 15 miles or more to work which isn’t feasible on a bike. On the weekend you’ll see lots of MAMILs (middle aged males in lycra) going across the area or into the hills. In the morning or late afternoon, lots of recreational riders around the residential neighborhoods. We also have a greenway bike/pedestrian trail that spans about 8 miles through our suburb, not far off from some bike paths that span Los Angeles and Orange Counties. E-bikes are becoming increasingly common. There’s some hill trails too for the more extreme cyclists.

    Commuting by bike is extremely rare here. Usually, you’ll see immigrants that work in the immediate area occasionally riding a bike to work. Sometimes you’ll see some elderly people riding a town type bicycle to get some groceries.

    Obviously not Copenhagen or Amsterdam here. But recreational, leisure, and fitness cycling is around.

19. Super popular, both for transportation and for exercise. The city has invested a lot in a very usable bike network.

20. Yes, both as commuting and as recreation

21. Not really. I live in a suburban area that is very car centric. Bicycles are mainly used for exercise or by kids who are too young to get a license, most people drive to get places

22. Very popular.

    We have 5 bikes between the 2 of us.

23. Uncommon for recreation for adults, 100% nonexistent for transport. There aren’t even sidewalks – it’s bike on the road or in the ditch. This is semi-rural NC, on the outskirts of Fayetteville.

24. No. The roads here are barely wide enough to fit two cars and have 55mph speed limits. Lots of people mountain bike on the trails though

25. Not much. Kids don’t learn to ride bikes as universally these days as they did a few decades ago.

26. When I lived in NYC it was too dangerous, a thing messengers and delivery guys did. Then Citibike came along and more people rode bikes and they added bikes lanes. Now I live in CT and we ride around the neighborhood and once in a while we put the bikes on a car and go to a rail trail and ride for a while. No one except a friend in Brooklyn uses a bike for work and he’s a freelance IT guy.

27. Yes, extremely.

28. Northern suburbs of NYC…very popular. Maybe TOO popular.

    There isn’t a great relationship between residents in our town and the cyclists. They’re supposed to ride single file but they don’t so they clog roads that aren’t already that wide to begin with. They run red lights, turn without arm signals. They get aggressive with drivers. Even though most people get annoyed with them, few people target them in any way. Like they don’t tailgate them or honk at them or stuff like that because we’re not monsters. We just don’t like them.

    There are a few coffee shops in town where they congregate and even though they all provide proper racks and the village has carved out road space for their bikes, they leave them leaned up against buildings and have broken windows. They clog the sidewalks and it’s hard for older people or parents with strollers to get by.
    We are popular because we are only 25-30 miles from Manhattan and the ride is pretty scenic.

29. If I see someone riding a bike it is almost always someone who lost their car because of a DUI.

30. Biking is huge on Tucson, recreational and commuting. We have one of the best paved trail systems in the country and there’s a lot of mountain bike trails in, or close to, town. There are bike lanes everywhere. The pros come to Tucson in the winter to train. Sadly, because there’s so many bikes, there’s a fair number of car/bike accidents. I see far too many “ghost bikes.”