Living Car Free - Type of town you live in

Everyone just move to Pittsburgh. I's very cycling friendly for having more bridges than Venice and being built in the mountains. After 2 weeks I was going up them like I lived there my whole life. There's lot's of cool buroughs with everything you could need fairly close(groceries, bike parts, most importantly bars) and as far as culture there lot's of bike kids ranging from freds to pisters. There's gallery openings with open bars, coffee shops, and every kind of punk rock show you could hope to see. I love it here.

i live in tampa florida. downtown is quite bike friendly, and is in fact similar to gerv's theory. it's right next to the university of tampa, buses run through downtown like bees around a beehive. and the streets are a definate grid pattern layout. i've got a friend who live just outside downtown and is a conveinient bike ride from downtown, channelside, ybor, etc.

where i live on the other hand in Lutz (which is like 20 minutes north of downtown) its complete opposite. long narrow curvey roads, not many sidewalks, no bus lines, nothing very close. makes the risk of getting hit by a car stand in the front of you mind each time your coming around a corner riding in that super narrow scary space about 2 inches wide in between the white line and the grass. i can just hear my old drivers ed teacher, "you gotta watch out for people on the side of the road, you never know when there gonna jump out in front of you and if you're not careful you'll [hit them and] make em do cartwheels!"

I have a theory. You will see a lot more car-free and car-light folks in this type of town
* university town with younger population
* has better bus transportation
* has more grid-type streets rather than suburban "crescents"

My reasoning is that the town I live in (Des Moines, Iowa) has an older population, awful bus transportation although the actual layout of the town is pretty bike friendly. 30 miles from here is Ames, a smaller town with a large college, much better bus transportation and a similar street layout. In Ames, you see a lot more folks biking for transportation and quite likely many of them are car-free since studying or working on campus is not that convenient with a car. In fact, buses are free for students and car parking is a major hassle.

What's other factors play into a better "biking for transportation" city?

Well, I went to college in Des Moines and rode my bike all the time. I thought it was great for riding. I also rode the Bus quite often, but admit it was usually either to downtown or to target. Has it gotten worse in the last 15 years?

Well, I went to college in Des Moines and rode my bike all the time. I thought it was great for riding. I also rode the Bus quite often, but admit it was usually either to downtown or to target. Has it gotten worse in the last 15 years?
Seems to pretty much as it was 12 years ago when I moved here. Buses don't move on Sundays and getting out to the western suburbs is possible... if you have lots of time. I think most of the cities in the US midwest are like this. Mostly everyone has 3 cars, so why would you need public transportation? :-(

I live in the center on a gird. I can take the bus anywhere 10mph
I have a 4,000 mile pop. density. Maricopa county is a big as NJ.
We have tons of cheap land and 100,000 people moving here a year.
Or I can ride on these roads where I don't see noone walking or ridding.
90percent of my ridding is done down a Bike BLVD
http://members.cox.net/bbahn/images/bl/bl.html

I live in the center on a gird. I can take the bus anywhere 10mph
I have a 4,000 mile pop. density. Maricopa county is a big as NJ.
We have tons of cheap land and 100,000 people moving here a year.
Or I can ride on these roads where I don't see noone walking or ridding.
90percent of my ridding is done down a Bike BLVD
http://members.cox.net/bbahn/images/bl/bl.html

I looked at the link you posted and it seems you're quite mad about the bike lane situation in your town. Though I can see some of your complaints, I must say that you should be happy that you do have bike lanes there. There's lots of towns that don't have a single bike lane, roads wide enough to fit a bike, or refuse to fill the insane amount of potholes all along the edge of the road. Most of my riding on the road has to be done out of the saddle to brace myself for big bumps, roots, potholes, pot holes full of sand and salt, and lots of broken glass. To top it off, if there's snow on the ground the whole side is taken over by 3ft piles of snow.

Your bike lanes may not be that great, but make sure to appreciate what you do have available to you.

I looked at the link you posted and it seems you're quite mad about the bike lane situation in your town. Though I can see some of your complaints, I must say that you should be happy that you do have bike lanes there. There's lots of towns that don't have a single bike lane, roads wide enough to fit a bike, or refuse to fill the insane amount of potholes all along the edge of the road. Most of my riding on the road has to be done out of the saddle to brace myself for big bumps, roots, potholes, pot holes full of sand and salt, and lots of broken glass. To top it off, if there's snow on the ground the whole side is taken over by 3ft piles of snow.

Your bike lanes may not be that great, but make sure to appreciate what you do have available to you.
I have to agree with wheel on this one. Those bike lanes are horrible! Personally, I would much rather ride in the street than ride in crappy bike lanes like that. In my town we have very few bike lanes, which is fortunate because the ones we do have are even crappier than the ones in wheel's pictures. But our traffic isn't as heavy as that, and our cagers are usually pretty decent. (I admit I have had a few run-ins with them, but not very often.) The potholes in your town, Bizurke, sound a lot worse than ours.

I live in a small university town (Pullman, WA) with a good bus system for its' size. Just across the state border is another almost twin city (Moscow, ID). University town, small, good bus system. But Pullman has maybe a quarter of the cyclists as Moscow. Pullman has more recreational cyclists. Moscow more people who use bicycles as transportation. I'm not sure what the difference is. If forced to make a guess, I would reckon that Moscow is a more liberal, progressive town than Pullman.

I've been many places where you would be considered strange for not having a car once you've finished school and begin a normal workaday life. However, here in Montreal, most of the people I know who live in the core of the city don't have cars. I've never owned a car, and so long as I live anywhere near downtown I never will. It's much cheaper to rent a car whenever necessary.

It's days like today, I hate living where I do(well I do love the snow, but you can't ride in this:p )
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v353/ryanz4/Myspace/Feb%2014%2007/Picture076.jpg