Originally Posted by
genec
Even in and around "bike city" Davis, which does have a good connection to Sacramento, fails if one wants to go to cities to the north and west.
Huh? the nearest cities west of Davis are Dixon (southwest, easily reached via the bike path out of town to the west and a quiet ride south from the path's end) and Winters (same bike path followed by the very popular very low car traffic Putah Creek Rd to the west). You'll see very senior citizens and children riding those routes, so it's far from a failure. On a typical evening in the Spring, one would see about one hundred cyclists on a ride between Davis and Winters, which isn't bad for a city of 66k.
North, there's Woodland, the county seat. The county is on a one-mile grid and six of those roads connect Davis to Woodland. Only Rd. 98 and road 102 are not ridden (even though Rd 102 has a bike lane, it just has too many cars and trucks for most folks to tolerate it). A dear friend who lives in Davis and works as a substitute teacher enjoyed riding to Woodland schools on the interesting rolling art pieces he used to make. It's not as if one has to be hard-core to ride between the two cities. If you want to go on to Esparto, just do the old north by west jog route (the same way the DC has re-entered Davis from the Capay Valley for decades). It's hardly a failed connection. I've ridden it with people who were literally on their first inter-city rides and none of them were intimidated in the slightest.
How far afield do you need to go? There's just a lot of farmland with a freeway through it as you go north. To the west of Winters, there's just Lake Berryessa and then on to either Napa or Lake counties. Hwy 128 isn't ideal, but it's always got quite a few bikes on it. Same with the connection to Vacaville. The real barrier is to the south since the Rio Vista area grew and thus blocked off access to Antioch (narrow levee roads don't play nicely with large traffic volumes), but there are many alternative ways into the (L)east bay via Vacaville.
Does one really need separated paths between cities when 1.) the cities are tiny and 2.) the roads are mostly empty? I think not. You may be hard pressed to find this situation in SoCal, but it's still the norm in the agricultural regions of NorCal.
By the way, Davis hasn't really been a bike city in decades. There's been a mild recovery of late, but it still has a loooooong way to go. There's a real difference between roads full of bikes and devoid of cars and what it currently has (some roads with bikes and all roads full of cars). It may recover some day, but let's not give crowns back until they're earned.