I really need your inputs for commuting locations
 

Probably within the next 12 months i plan on moving from Miami, Florida too "any where else but here"!!!
I am looking for a commuting friendly town that i basically do not need a car for my majority of my needs. But i previously lived in New York and while the subway gets u around i did not care for the major congestion of people everywhere and fear factor for your life. If u have ever been to Key West, Florida this is what i need, except for the 1 - 2 million dollar price tag for a house.
So my plan is to find this utopia and then search for housing and a job next. Am i just dreaming? A small town that people still say hello instead of flipping u off for no apparent reason............ I don't even care if not's in the U.S. Please help..

Redcliff Alberta Canada!!!

Go to the hardware store and say hello to your friends. Worst crime is when the local kids stole my garbage cans but their parents made them bring them back and grounded them for week. Great place to grow up.

Burlington Vermont is good!

what is your business?

If you don't mind heading up north...

East Lansing, MI!! I grew up there. It's a friendly midwestern college town with a large university (Michigan State), a well educated community, no traffic to speak of, decent number of bars, theaters, bookstores, etc. Convenient train service to Chicago, the beaches of Lake Michigan are <2 hours drive away, plenty of open space.

Drivers have always been courteous to cyclists, in my experience. Also housing prices are very low compared to on the east coast. EL population is 40,000 permanent + 40,000 students, the greater Lansing metro population is maybe 1/2 million. Many of my friends there work at technology or automotive companies.

Oh yeah, and the ground is flat. Flat flat flat, with these pathetic little hills that won't even make you shift :)

Any small town should fit the bill. Virginia is full of 'em, anywhere outside a 50 or 60 mile radius of DC and a 30 mile radius of Richmond. Well I guess kick out the VA Beach/Norfolk area too. But if you head west and/or south from Richmond there must be hundreds of small towns that would be what you're looking for.

I used to live in Boca Raton (went to FAU)... You couldn't pay me to move back to FL. Even though I'm in Northern VA (the DC area) I love the fact that we get four seasons, we have a few hills... Everyone has their own preferences of course but I don't think I'd even move south of the Carolinas again.

I'm outside of Dayton Ohio near Wright-Patt AFB. Lots of small towns and bike paths in the area. If you do high tech stuff (or anything that goes along to support it) this is a great area.

Boulder, Colorado is kind of a bike commuter mecca in many ways. Anywhere in Boulder County is bicyclist-friendly, IMO (though plenty of people disagree with me).

RFM

I am partial to the DC area. Thge bike trail system here is second to none. check out www.waba.org

Yes, the trails here are nice. But riding on the roads is quite intimidating, and the trails don't take you everywhere, not by a long shot.

The DC suburbs are a very nice place to live, I think, but it's not a small town environment for sure. People are busy and brusque, there's a lot of traffic, and it's very expensive to buy a house here.

Adelaide, South Australia.

Good riding, nice people, an hour from some of the best wines in the world.

the place you are looking for is Portland Oregon. heres what its got...its always voted one of the bike friendliest towns in the US. Its got great public transport for how big the town is. Its got great bike shops, a good music scene, great beer. It rains in the winter but doesn't get that cold. It rarely snows, its not windy. The summers average in the 80s. If you live and work within portland proper, you get get from one side of town to the other on a bike in 45 minutes or less. there are some good trails for longer distances too. you're 1.5 hours from skiing and 2 hours from the beach. its got great fishing and other outdoors type stuff... what else do you need.

ps it does have a crappy unemployment rate, but you can't win em all

God although I live in Seattle, Portland,OR is the best cycling city ever!

i live in seattle too. we've got pretty good cycling city here too, but portland was built for bikes. the mayor of portland rode with critical mass once this year. thats a pretty good sign right there.

For ease of access to everything you need, great public transportation, bike friendliness, and all the things you seek, few U.S. cities could compare to just about any small town throughout most of Western Europe. If you don't want to own a car and you don't want to live in a big city (i.e. NYC) western europe has this country thoroughly licked. Cost of living can be very reasonable in less urban areas in Italy, France and Germany (the only places I have visited.) The U.K. might also have lots to offer, but I have only ever been to London so can't add too much.

Portland may be the exception in the U.S., but I would be interested to know if there any Portland residents who don't own a car? You probably can't get to the beach or skiing easily without one. Portland sounds great to me, but if you really want the things in your original post, Europe is the way to go. There are, of course, other major issues to consider; language and cultural differences being the most obvious.

good luck, sounds like a fun adventure.

Not all small towns are good. I'm temporarily here in Fort Wayne, IN, and this town is terrible. It's OK if you're a vehicular rider, in which case any town is fine, but if you're like me and commuting means riding to the grocery store and park with your kid in tow then it stinks. Sorry it's hard to keep a 20mph pace with a MTB and Burley, not even with 1.5" slicks. :)

There are no pedestrian crossings here until you get into downtown Ft. Wayne. It's a town of 200k and there's already urban sprawl. Subdivisions are built with one way in and one way out. They all filter out onto one or two streets which take you into town.

Minneapolis is quite good except for the winter weather. Lots of bike locker rental and you can ski the bike paths to work if there's enough snow. The gear is about the same, clothes with windproof fronts which vent out the back, etc.

How about the Finger Lakes region in NY state? I lived there for a year after college. Great rolling terrain for riding and the people are pretty nice.

Thx for all of your inputs. I am going to start looking into these different areas.