Originally Posted by
Butterthebean
I have to concur. Houston is one of the worst car cities in the country (probably right behind LA). The mantra here is, "Man, Wife and 2.3 SUV's per family". Every other person here drives a 4 door truck. Most folks own at least one gun. Public transportation is almost non existant except in the inner city. Unfortunately, most of the 4 million people here live in the ever growing suburbs. The bike lanes here are rare indeed, and the ones that do exist are useless...basically the occassional 1/4 mile bike lane to no where. And the traffic on most nonresidential roadways drives at 45mph or above....sometimes way above.
What does owning a gun have to do with anything? Seriously, the anti-Texas/anti-Houston cr@p here really gets to me. I have an 8 mile ride to the commuter bus at the park and ride in my suburb, throw my bike on the bus, and then a 4 block ride in traffic downtown to my office building, which has a bike rack in the parking garage - very safe.
As long as you know where you're going, choose your route well, own your lane and stay aware, you'll be fine.
As far as non-commute riding goes, there are organized rides every weekend from September through to the MS150 in April (the largest MS150 in the country, with over 13,000 people riding each year and thousands more volunteers). For the MS150, in Houston you see every major corporation, from Halliburton to KPMG, donating millions of dollars in cash and volunteer time.
On all of these organized rides, which all raise money for local causes, from high school cheerleading teams to Ducks Unlimited to camps for developmentally challenged kids, you see police and sheriffs blocking intersections for us. On the MS, you see people lining the roads cheering for you. The entire town of Fayetteville is out in town square ringing cowbells.
In any suburb, you will find club rides during the week and every weekend, with skill levels for every rider. These usually start out at an LBS, of which there are many in Houston and the surrounding area.
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Houston may not be Boulder or Portland but you have to consider the situation in each town. Houston is the oil/gas capital of the United States, and has also been rated the "#1 City to Work, Live and Play In" by Kiplinger's magazine (
http://houstonist.com/2008/05/30/the_comeback_ki.php). There's a lot more to offer here than just highways. I've ridden multiple times from Katy (25 miles outside of Houston) to University of Houston (Past downtown and through a "bad area") through the Medical Center and back to Katy through the Galleria area. I've gotten honked at once - and it was while in a bike lane. The rest of the time I was in a regular lane, on streets like Westheimer, Clay and Post Oak Boulevard.
Houston isn't as bad as people make it out to be... and can be downright enjoyable for bike riding, if you just get over the fact that you're not in Portland Oregon or some other place that smells like patchouli oil.