BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

ahhhh. took e a minute to figure that out. from worst to this

Ditto on the time lag! That is awesome! Congrats (and thanks) to BP, Steve Patchan and myriad of others who have allowed us to see this elevation in our ranking.

Oh.... Yes, that's excellent. Way ahead of Cleveland anyway. Wherever we are I want to be ahead of Cleveland.

Wherever we are I want to be ahead of Cleveland

Unless there's a heavy tailwind.

That old last-place rating was totally unfair anyway.

But I can't figure how DC, Louisville and NYC got most improved if Pittsburgh moved from worst (by their ranking) to 28.

because dc, louisville, and nyc have put in infrastructure that doesn't fade in a year.

i agree with those "most improved" rankings. i don't think it was unfair either. when we were rated the worst, there weren't even trails next to the rivers.

How you can rate anything in NYC is beyond me. It's so flippin' huge. The five boros represent a land area that stretches from Vandergrift to Canonsburg (NE to SW) and Ambridge to Irwin (NW to SE).

because the city had no bike infrastructure and now has physically separated bike lanes, bike lanes all over the place, bike racks everywhere, a trail that goes the length of manhattan on both sides of the island, continually updating the accessibility of bridges, transit access with bikes, road diets galore, city sponsored ad/safety campaigns, etc etc.

Watch some videos from streetfilms, or visit DC and you will see why they are on that list.

When Pittsburgh was rated "among the worst" (mind you, they didn't say absolutely worst, despite present claims), I was riding daily without significant incident, as were a bunch of my friends and acquaintances. City streets were rideable, downtown was rideable. There were lots of low-speed residential streets -- the same ones that most of us are still using now.

I had seen lots of places that were worse than that -- mostly new car-centered cities in the South. Crazy high-speed arterials connecting strip malls to cul-de-sac projects.

Bicycling magazine was just slagging off Pittsburgh because it was an easy target 20 years ago. Those ratings are so much more about what cities are fashionable at the moment than they are about where the cycling is actually good or bad.

FWIW, I posted the link on my facebook page and got comments from college friends (who were here in the mid-90s) calling BS on the "worst biking city" stuff. I agree to some extent - certainly we didn't have all the trails and bike lanes and whatnot that we have now, but that doesn't mean it was a bad place to ride.

IIRC, one time when Pgh got on the "worst bike city" list, the editors pointed to our topography as a big factor. Now, (inexplicably to me) the hills are veiwed as bike positive.

Big fan that Minneapolis beat Portland on that list.

Oft overlooked, Minneapolis is insanely bike friendly.

the hills were cited. regardless, the rating got the city in gear, and possibly spurred the first masloff map back in 92

During the 1992 bus strike, which was about the time the Masloff-admin bike map came out, I had to come Downtown for some meeting. I still had my van at the time, so it was a cinch to put the bike in the van, park by Three Rivers Stadium, and bike into town. The problem was figuring out where to put it once I had it in town. No racks anywhere.

I think what I did was roll the bike right in the front door at some big building and said, "OK, where do you recommend I put it?" They weren't real happy about it, but they ended up allowing me to put it in a stairwell.

Yeah, we've come a long way since then.

Interesting thought: If Pittsburgh had in 1995 the bike support we have now? We would have been unquestionably #1 in the USA. The changes we see are nation-wide.

Mick

"OK, where do you recommend I put it?"

This should be near the top of your list of questions to never ask, ever

We've come a long way, although there are still places that leave me at a loss to find someplace to lock up (South Side Works?)

@Mick - good point - I remember Davis, CA being a legendary bike mecca back in the day, and the rail-trails were moving along, but overall you didn't hear that much about bike infrastructure.

I was riding daily without significant incident, as were a bunch of my friends and acquaintances

i was riding here in the mid 90s too. i can hardly say that it was without significant incident. my range was way smaller than it was now, ie i rode far less miles/hours, and i would say that i experienced daily harassment, even on smaller neighborhood streets. i'd even have threat of assault pretty frequently. that hardly happens now.

The idea that you could use features of the natural landscape as an indictment against a city's bike-friendliness to me is beyond absurdity. San Francisco? Oh, it's a terrible city for biking, look at all those hills. It's like holding a city's weather against it. Ultimately the only thing I can say about it is "Portland: biggest wimps ever?"

http://bike-pgh.org/bbpress/topic/portland-biggest-wimps-ever

Unless of course they're referring not to the hills but the narrow roads and poor sight lines that tend to occur as a result of the difficult landscape on say, the south side slopes.

Bicycle Times beat out Bicycling!

Heh.

quote: Bicycle Times beat out Bicycling!

Both of which beat out Bicycle Time's patron/partner publication, Dirt Rag (sniff)

Yet Dirt Rag's local presence was a factor in our ranking of 28th most bike friendly city.

Imagine what it would be like if we got credit for BOTH Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times in both rankings!

Hey guys, don't knock Cleveland. Wide, straight, flat streets with relatively few cars (or residents for that matter) = awesome urban biking. Euclid Ave. is the best bikefriendly street I have ever ridden. I used to ride from E. 105 to W. 65 regularly - for fun! Of course, then you're dodging bullets, not cars...

Naw, totally just joking. If Cleveland can manage to get their velodrome built, they're going to leapfrog our ass. I hope they can get it done.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2010/01/fast_track_cycling_makes_progr.html

Ooh, I wonder what bullet holes do to an "air supported dome"? Yikes.

I wonder if theirs will be as impossible to reach as ours is...

Our oval may be difficult to reach for novices, but anybody who wants to be a competitive racer certainly should be able to swing it.

re: Cleveland...

I've ridden in the University Circle area before. I don't think I would consider Euclid through there very bike-friendly.

http://bit.ly/axu7Bt

Now when I was there it was just a 4+1 lane road -- the raised median planter was just a twinkle in some University planner's eye, but as far as I can tell bike accommodations have been completely left out of the resulting project. Am I missing something?

edit: Wow, that first one was just the first street view I looked at. This one's in front of Severance Hall and right in the center of campus: http://bit.ly/bEEcvc

@ asobi: the second pic looks JUST like Carson Street! LOL

For what it's worth, Cleveland has more bikes for sale on Craigslist.

Nah, now that they've updated the whole street with the buslanes and all that, from the Cleveland Clinic to CSU Euclid has a pretty solid bike lane situation... riding from the East Side to downtown and back was a breeze. However I do concede that the area around University Circle is an absolute nightmare, whether you're on East Blvd, E. 105th, Euclid, etc. it's all kind of a headache in general until you break through to Little Italy... ahhh, memories.