Toronto, Ontario

the downtown core in the middle of our summers is perfect for biking.. Lots of traffic congestion.. crappy road conditions, very hot and smoggy temperature.. everything a cyclist wants.

I guess St. Louis would rank somewhere near the bottom of the list of cycling cities, although a lot depends on where in St. Louis you go. John S. Allen does a good job of describing the situation in Recommendations for the St. Louis area (http://home.swbell.net/mpion/index.htm), especially for someone who only spent 3 days here. I can't disagee much with his obsevations.

He mentions the cycling lane on Wydown Boulevard. As he points out, the redesign of that a few years ago was actually to discourage cycling. That bike lane, as well as one on Holly Hills in south St. Louis, was probably put in more as an excuse to restrict automobile traffic to a single lane than to encourage cycling.

There's a bicycle path along the River Des Peres (which Allen doesn't mention) which has to be one of the worst bicycle paths in the country. ;) Nobody uses it, understandably.

The Forest Park bike path was originally constructed around 1900. It's not bad on off-peak hours, except that now half of it is closed for construction. The roads in the park used to be good, but now some of them are being repaved and, (EGAD!) they're installing "bicycle traps", otherwise known as storm drains with the grates running parallel to the direction of travel. That's progress. :rolleyes: As Allen points out, those types of grates a fairly common in the area.

St. Louis has a long way to go to be bicycle friendly, although I can find places to ride. The good news (if you can call it good) is that the St. Louis area is probably as friendly to bicycles as it is to pedestrians.