Virgin Vacations gives us the 11 most bicycle friendly cities in the world. They say, biking is a great way to become intimate with a city and get some exercise too. Who can argue with that logic? I love spending a day in a new city biking around and getting to know the town at a friendly level.
Virgin rated the cities based on five categories created by The Bicycle Friendly Communities Campaign and referred to as the Five E's. They are engineering, encouragement, evaluation & planning, education and enforcement. So based upon these criteria the top 11 are, drum roll please...
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Portland, Oregon
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Boulder, Colorado
- Davis, California
- Sandnes, Norway
- Trondheim, Norway
- San Francisco, California
- Berlin, Germany
- Barcelona, Spain
- Basel, Switzerland
How cool that four of the 11 and three of the top five are right here in the U.S. The cities range from little Sandnes, Norway (population 56,000) to Berlin, Germany (population 3.4 million). Let's hope the next list includes a city from our area.
Maybe Silver Level "Bicycle Friendly Community" Arlington can make that cut?
Chris Hamilton is the Commuter Services Chief for Arlington County, manager of CommuterPageBlog and The TDM Professional blog and is a biking/Metrorail commuter from Alexandria, Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C.
We're very pleasant to be #2 in the world, but I think most of us in Portland would love to have all the separated bike paths that are in Copenhagen. Me thinks the Portland myth outshines facts on the ground.
Posted by: Steve Hoyt | December 13, 2007 at 12:48 PM