I did a 50 mile ride with a couple of people today who agreed to give me a "tour" of the bicycle paths in Irvine, California. Since I was new to the group, they put me in the back of their group. Although the group was cruising along around a couple of MPH slower than I would like, I wanted to do the tour. Plus, it was nice to relax most of the time and protected from the wind.

Irvine, CA is a rather large city that contains a downtown area, a fairly wide open undeveloped area, and very busy suburban centers all around. It's not a city like NY or San Francisco, it is more like a very large suburb. But the city is lined with perfectly paved bicycle paths with beautifuly manicured landscaping along some areas. The paths take you all around the city and it is used by a lot of cyclists. It falls under the term Multi-Use path but it really is a de-facto bicycle path because most of the people in it were on bicycles. This is due to the size of the city and the fact that the paths sometimes went on and on so it really encourages mobility on a set of big wheels. I saw some runners. There were some families with kids on bikes. But most of the riders I saw looked like regular riders including dedicated roadies riding in groups in a paceline. Unlike in my city, I didn't see any annoying dog walkers with their dogs loose or on a mile long leash that required you to tiptoe around them (and occasional get chased). The people I saw seem very aware that these paths are dominated by bicyclists so walking a dog with a long leash is probably not the best idea. Plus, the riders I encountered were fast. The Paths themselves were wide open most of the time so there was plenty of room for everyone. The width was about the size of a large lane or two narrow lanes of car traffic.

It was truely a refreshing experience to see this well organized labyrinth of paths dedicated to bicycle mobility. You could ride for miles and miles at speed and not stop for signal ligths, pedestrians listening to music and oblivious to your presence, cars, or any other obstruction to speed. There were no constant rush of annoying cars and trucks or extremely loud and obnoxious motorcycles buzzing by you. Sure, you had to slow down to pass larger groups but for the most part, it was a great place to really ride. The paths were all relatively flat so there were no challenging hills. The hills are in my city! Of course when it was time to leave the path, you could "exit" into a public park to use restrooms, or ride along Irvine's supersmooth asphalts with bicycle lanes on the roads to the nearest watering hole.

I think if large cities across the USA had similar, very organized mazes of bicycle paths that were well maintained, safe, and had easy access across many parts of the city, more people would actually get off their cars and ride their bicycle. What was that statement? "If you build it, they will come". My city could learn a few lessons from Irvine, California.

Edited to add, another bonus to riding dedicated bicycle paths is that people didn't stare at you. One of the things that kind of make my roll my eyes when riding around my city, which already has a lot of roadies on the road, is that car drivers love to ogle. Women, men, kids, dogs, everyone just loves to stare and occassionaly holler something as they whizzed by. On the bike paths, everyone was a biker so you didn't feel like you were in a fishbowl.

Peace.