Haha I ride that same route to Independence and then take the trail to work by the hospital. I'll be the guy with the bright yellow panniers, because, well, Southern drivers...

I've been riding a little in Brooklyn and Queens, two of NYC's so-called outer boroughs, which the city tends to neglect in infrastructure. Well, gee, there are bike lanes in a great many places, and on streets that don't have room, the single travel lane is being marked as a shared lane for motor vehicles and bikes. In other words, pretty much every street is becoming a bike route.

Mayor Bloomberg kicked this all off. Mayor Deblasio came into office in January, and he's known to be somewhat less pro-bike, though I expect him to be a better mayor overall. I hope he continues the current plans for bike infrastructure.

Unfortunately, in this area you really need to be 2 wheel savvy to even attempt non-recreational riding. Because of this, and the way our seasons are, and the generally bike-not-friendly laout of the streets etc, i often go 2-3 weeks seeing no one on another bike. That said, sometimes i see 4-5 people in a day, sometimes 2-3 in the span of a minute or less. A lot of the time they are going the same route i am, its like grocery shopping seeing the same person every few minutes (no, i'm not with them!!!).

- Andy

I was on the 2-lane highway and looking down from an overpass, I see another cyclist who is making his way towards the ramp up to the highway I'm on. I continue riding and pass the point where the on ramp and my lane merge, no sight of him but he was quite a way off so, that's it I guess. About 3km/2mi further along, I hear a "hello" (actually, bon jour) and this same fellow pulls up to me and since it is a wide shoulder portion of the highway (~3m/yd), we ride together for a couple of minutes and then, with a bye, he pulls ahead and off he goes. He was riding a nice Scott carbon cyclocross and obviously had more strength than I but it was nice of him to pull up and chat for a bit.

Well, i'm shocked, i've oficially seen at least 2 commuters on really nice bikes in 2 days, plus 4 rec riders...

Forecast calls for warm to hot daytime weather between now & weds, so i'm suspecting this number may rise dramatically...

- Andy

I miss seeing other commuters and a lot of bicycles on racks. Growing up, I didn't realize how progressive Colorado was, with a lot of people participating in outdoor activities, like cycling. In the mid-1990s, there was a large bike rack at the middle school I went to (the schools I attended in the south didn't have any at all), with usually around 20 bikes parked there, like a smaller version of bicycle parking lots outside schools in the Netherlands (although the local elementary school and high school didn't seem to have any bike racks).

I can see why the state is ranked among one of the top states for cycling.

Daily.

I now live in a small village where less bikes are... but when I go to larger cities for students, you see TONS of people with bikes.
An example of the bike-parkings near the railway stations of Leuven and Gent:

Here in Boston, previous long-term Mayor Tom Meninino was a staunch cycling advocate. He himself was about as “Fred” a cyclist as you could imagine, and took some ribbing of pictures on him on the road on his early morning outings. I always hoped I could encounter him as I rode though his neighborhood.

Nonetheless, he was a powerful and effective mayor and remade the city as a cycling model with numerous bike lanes and a very successful bike-sharing system (Hubways). Indeed he had, and the new mayor retains, a bike “czar,” Nicole Freedman.

Contrast him with Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford:

One of the huge problems I've seen is lack of bike racks in shopping centers and the like. If there were more, more people would ride, for sure. Might even be good for business?

I would ultimately like something between a bike rack and this:



- Andy

I live 20km from work so haven't cycled in yet. There are 2 lads in my department that cycle in regularly and probably 6 lads altogether working here that cycle. I never meet any other cyclists on the roads in the mornings but then I live in the ass hole of nowhere.

When I lived in Boulder, Colorado, 20% of the population (By most est.) rode to and from work! Some routes were jammed with folks going to and from. Man, do I miss home!!

Not sure how many were commuting, maybe only a couple, but I saw 15 (or so) other cyclists out this morning.

8 of them were a group of roadies that I see near my house some Friday mornings but the other 7 might have been commuting.

I'm pretty that's the most I've ever encountered in one morning ride around here!

I live on the west side of Milwaukee and commute downtown. I only see a one or two other commuters on my way into work, but I think that is due to the fact that less people are going in opposite direction. I know there are other bikers heading downtown (I see their tracks), but I don't see them as we are all heading the same way and travelling about the same speed. On the way home I will take a path (Hank Aaron Trail) and see more people in nice weather, but I am not sure all are commuters.

I bike to work twice a week in the southern part of San Diego County. I go through South San Diego, National City, Chula Vista, Back into San Diego, and end up in Imperial Beach (towns). On my ride, I usually see about 15 to 20 riders in the summer and maybe 8 to 10 in the winter. When it rains, I usually see 2 or 3.

5/27/14
I took a count today. 20 commuters. I mean people with packs or panniers. I saw about 7 people that looked like rec. riders or roadies. When I stopped for coffee I saw a group of roadies go by the other way. I stopped counting them at 50.

Back in the 90s, one year Toronto won some bicycle magazine's award as the most bike friendly city in North America, but our progress has been slow since then, with some backsliding, and a lot of other cities have been more aggressive in adding new bike supports and innovations.

Even so, we have a huge bicycling population, which I believe continues to grow (partly for demographic and economic reasons) and a few kilometers of new facilities get added most years, so we are now a bit of a dark horse, maybe a little behind the leaders, but still in the race.

I wonder how many of those bikes are now permanent residents of that bicycle graveyard, having been misplaced some decade and a half ago.

I passed someone on base earlier in the week who appears to have been riding a double toptube Dutch bike. Unfortunately it was SUPER foggy and we were headed in opposite directions, so I didn't get a detail.

Also today I caught up to a guy riding a Dahon Vitesse! Was on a backroad my SO and I took on a whim. Looked good, caught up and tried to ask him about it but he was less than interested.

M.

I am seeing one or two kids in the morning riding bikes to school. That's it. And I know that there are 2-4 other people from our company (500+) riding their bikes to work. But that's it. This is Texas (not Austin) and not too many folks ride their bike to work. It does not have AC and no truck bed... lol

I haven't seen any other commuters yet this year. Last year I think I saw about 5 all year. Either 2010 or 2011, whichever was the first year that gas hit $4/gal, I saw probably 2 dozen, including one day where I saw 3 commuters in one trip. That fell off pretty quickly though.

I've only been commuting for a few weeksand have only seen two other commuters. One dude a few weeks ago the looked like he was thinking about robbing a liquor store, another goofy looking guy like myself, and some chick a few days ago. Aside from that I've basically been El Lobo Solo. Now I have seen a few bikes locked up near the bus depot at the mall and a lot of cabbies with bike racks, but that's been about it my way. It's kind of cool in a way especially when I get to work and have the entire rack to my self!

I probably don't see any other bike commuters. I can see some bicyclists in the park on my way just riding for fun, it seems, and that has just started now when the weather gets warm. During the winter, especially this last winter which only ended about a month ago, I was the only person on the bike, and it felt so great. Now when I see anyone on the bike, I'm like:"Where were you 2 months ago?"

Not that much I guess. You'd be surprised how much of them are still used frequently.
There are of course... but they are left there for other people to ride with. Some of them are stolen and left there too, for others to use for free.


Leuven en Ghent are student-cities.
Most of these bikes are not there for the regular citizens who live there, but for temporary students who are there for 1 to 5 years max, or for people who need to use it for a few weeks or months.
Those bikes are mostly *nd-hand bikes, you buy or lend it for a few dollars from the old students who leave the city, and when you finished university, you give it away to the next generation students.

Lots of bikes are stolen too, some students get their bike stolen by another student, and then steal a bike from others too. Therefore, some bikes are there without locks, so you can just pick one up and ride, leave it where it is in the same city. You find bikes all around the city so you actually do not need locks. You just hop on a bike and ride.

Most adults, the working class, have mostly better bikes and store them at parkings that are monitored against theft by video camera's. They lock them of course.

I occasionally see other commuters going along my route in Cincinnati, but I see way more roadies. I'll probably come across 0-3 commuters per day.

Judging be this forum and people I've met, I know we've got more! I guess not many share my same commute? When I get to work there are only about 7-10 other bikes locked up (even in nice weather) and I work for one of the bigger employers in the area (like THOUSANDS of people work here).