Portland is great if you think bike lanes are great. It's hell if you think bike lanes are generally a bad idea. In Portland, cyclists can and do get tickets if they don't use a bike lane. They also face motorists who think that cyclists belong only in bike lanes.
Not to long ago, a cyclist was hit on a road without a bike lane. Just this week, someone in Portland
wrote a letter to the editor saying that the cyclist should have been on one of the roads with "bike facilities":
Look, what's done is done, but this is what I want to say to my fellow cyclists: Stay the hell off the main streets and embrace the alternatives. That means stay the hell off Hawthorne, stay the hell off Division, etc., etc., etc. Get over yourselves and get on the alternative routes the city has spent gazillions on to make safe for us.
The Ohio Bike Federation has a
good site that explains what makes a town "
cyclist friendly."