Oh The Urbanity! just did a great episode on Victoria, B.C. The city is too small to make this list (pop. ~100K), but the video is worth checking out if you want to feel a little better about the progress of bike infrastructure in N.A. cities:
Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
81–90 of 119 posts
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#82I've cycled the SF South Bay Area, Davis, Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Bruge, and Antwerp.
Austin TX plants random, worn out, unpainted, leftover, camouflaged concrete shapes that serve no discernible positive purpose in the middle of city streets frequented by motorcycles, pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and skaters. That's how much of a shit they give about anyone not in a truck or a rented Slingshot.
I keep meaning to cycle DC and Portland.
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#83I've cycled the SF South Bay Area, Davis, Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Bruge, and Antwerp. Austin TX plants random, worn out, unpainted, leftover, camouflaged concrete shapes that serve no discernible positive purpose in the middle of city streets frequented by motorcycles, pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and skaters. That's how much of a shit they give about anyone not in a truck or a rented Slingshot. I keep meaning to…
[dead]
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Norway is more about being comfortable riding in the cold on spiked tires. The hills of Oslo don’t bother you after a couple months of riding them.
I'm in Wisconsin, and I just got the bike with spiked tires out today. Even if there's not a lot of snow, I prefer to sacrifice one bike to road salt than have to maintain my "nice" bike through the winter. People act like I'm some kind of freak when I arrive at work on my bike in the middle of the winter. But I remind them that there are people who work all day outdoors in places like Alaska and Canada, and 20 minut…
This is how I feel about riding in the rain to work. Like yes you get wet but also are you unable to get wet? If you want, wear rain clothes so you stay dry. And if it’s really pouring just wait half an hour or take the bus if you can’t wait. Just plan to ride every day and be okay with the days when life won’t let you.
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's evident that people use bicycles in Montreal -- TFA itself attests this. But if your point is that North American cities all tend to have the same downtown/suburban contrasts, you are quite right. People who live $Downtown usually have walkable neighbourhoods and perhaps even access to underground transit. People who live outside the centre of the city mostly end up depending on a private vehicle. Bicycles are p…
> It's evident that people use bicycles They do. Also people who use bicycles in Montreal are disproportionately males and mostly of the certain age group. That's very apparent if you stay for ~10 minutes near Grande Bibliothèque for example or any other relatively busy piste cyclable. If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one. Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in compariso…
> If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one.
And yet it is relatively successful in Montreal (as TFA says). If we are completely honest, bicycling could be called a niche activity in most of North America.
> Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
For students, for example.
I did say, "Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal". I did not claim more, and I also said that it's a controversial topic. On the positive side, Bixi has been a relative success compared to other Canadian cities.[1]
(You know Bixi, so I'll add a link for others to read.)
[1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixi_(bicycle_share_system)
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#86Taipei? Are they ever bene there?
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#87The biggest hurdle to biking for me is parking safely. Unless I can park it behind locked doors I have an anxious feeling that it may not be still there when I return. This is no problem when bicycling to work, but for arbitrary errands it is. A good lock helps of course, but it still feels like a gamble.
This is the ultimate American urbanist conundrum. Bikes are pretty useless for transportation in American cities because of rampant theft. Locks get cut in the broad daylight and even if the thief is too inept to steal an angle grinder, or already ran out of batteries for today, they will still rip off parts (wheels, saddle, brakes, group, they will even rip out lights from the mounts, just because). But they also cannot demand the law enforcement against it because the thieves are the precious "unhoused" (which is very easy to check by visiting any encampment and observing all the bikes and bike parts there). So we get this strange situation when cities build bike lanes and bike parks which are empty because, at most, you can only commute on your bike if your place of work has a secure storage.
Enforcing the laws against bike thieves would be 100x more effective in promoting biking than building anything.
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in Wisconsin, and I just got the bike with spiked tires out today. Even if there's not a lot of snow, I prefer to sacrifice one bike to road salt than have to maintain my "nice" bike through the winter. People act like I'm some kind of freak when I arrive at work on my bike in the middle of the winter. But I remind them that there are people who work all day outdoors in places like Alaska and Canada, and 20 minut…
This is how I feel about riding in the rain to work. Like yes you get wet but also are you unable to get wet? If you want, wear rain clothes so you stay dry. And if it’s really pouring just wait half an hour or take the bus if you can’t wait. Just plan to ride every day and be okay with the days when life won’t let you.
I think what happens is when people have a routine outdoor activity, they develop a sense of their local weather, that seems like a mystery if one isn't regularly immersed in it. Also, some subtle adaptations make it easier, such as wearing quick drying clothes or having an emergency change at work.
Now, I do have the luxury of flexible hours at my workplace, but (for instance) my daughter doesn't, and she manages just fine.
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#89Paris being 5th when biking there is pure chaos compared to many Asian cities makes the ranking look capricious. Paris's City hall is definitely pro bike and a lot of money and effort was poured into infrastructure, but that dosn't suddenly makes it safe or largely adopted. More generally, infrastructure isn't everything. Tokyo small streets with absolutely no markings can be way safer and bike friendlier than a brig…
I didn't even feel particularly safe as a pedestrian in Tokyo or Osaka. Despite the good public transport, Japanese cities have cars absolutely everywhere, even in tiny streets that should really be pedestrian zones. Paris is much better in my opinion.
Tokyo fundamentally doesn't define pedestrian only zones except in very specific conditions.
I get why you'd feel unsafe, but IMHO it's the exact opposite effect: 99% of the streets don't have a sidewalk or anything specific for pedestrian, and thus are pedestrian first.
Small kids, dogs, cats, elderlies will be walking in the middle of the street. As a result cars drive way slower than they'd do in Paris and they need to be way more alert to what's happening. Every small street is basically the same as the pedestrian zone in the middle of Paris.
Re: Copenhagenize Index 2025: The Global Ranking of Bicycle-Friendly Cities
#90Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal, but whether Montreal is actually friendly to bicyclists is open to heated debate. Cars dominate the topology.
Montreal's city leaders might be friendly. Its climate is not. Once the snow falls, the number of bicycle commuters plummets towards zero. Paris, vancouver, the netherlands ... they have stable climates condusive to bike use. At -10 it isnt the cars that will cause a crash, it is the physics of a two rubber wheels trying to navigate on ice. Also, Quebec is not a city. The city is called "Quebec City" just as how New…
I still see people cycling in Chicago in the cold and snow (usually while I'm also riding my bike)
Granted in a bona fide blizzard like today, i am choosing the bus instead. But this is the biggest snowfall in several years, not exactly a frequent problem.