Best Commuting City in the South?
 

Hi everyone,
I am a bike commuter from the frozen US Northeast where winter does not really end until early June. My wife and I are considering relocating to the US South. Among the major Southern cities, which ones are the best for bicycle commuters? Am I correct in believing Austin, TX is good? What cities are better?
Thanks,
Neil

I haven't commuted in other cities, but Memphis is becoming awesome. Our mayor is aggressively pursuing a complete streets approach. If you live in midtown there's pretty much nothing you need that isn't in biking distance. Summers re really rough though. My spouse and I are academics, so we leave town from late May through mid-August. Fall through spring is wonderful.

I'd like to know more about that complete streets program. It sounds awesome.

The second post on this blog gives a bit of background on it: http://bikepedmemphis.wordpress.com/

one more: http://www.bicycling.com/news/advoca...oved-bike-city

on the recreation side of things, the city has two major parks: Overton in midtown and Shelby Farms out in the burbs. A new green line connects the two. Once you are out at Shelby Farms, there's a series of connected green ways. I can get in a 30 mile ride from my house with almost no interaction with cars.

Which blog? Did you mean to post a link?

Sorry. I just fixed it.

I'm not sure that "the south" and "awesome bike commuting" can ever be used together. Having said that, many of the southern cities are coming around and improving their bicycle infrastructure. I can't speak for any city other than my own town of Nashville, TN. The urban part of town is a pretty nice place for cycling. There is a great MUP that follows along the river and several bikeways that meander through town. Many major streets have a decent bike lane or sharrows. Nashville is also working on a "complete streets" program and bike lanes are popping up all over town. Now, once you get into the suburbs (which is a vast majority of Metro Nashville) it's a totally different story. Very little comfort for cyclists. I will say, that driver attitudes here are all and all friendly. When I moved back from Berkeley (bikers paradise), I was afraid of the attitudes I would encounter, but honestly it's been pleasant. I live in an old street car inner-suburb, so roads are safe, speed limits are low and people aren't in too much of a hurry.

Good luck on your search. The south is a nice place. I think you'll enjoy it.

Memphis sounds great!

... can I plug for Chapel Hill/Carrboro, NC? :)

Nicest drivers I've seen, good infrastructure, but hills...

Yeah, I was kind of thinking this question was like asking 'Where is the best place to be a turkey in November?"

I'd probably pick a small, state-university town. They tend to be an oasis in many ways.

Seconded! But yeah, wow, the hills and my poor little legs...

Best,
Ash

"Best Commuting City in the South" is a bit of an oxymoron. There are plenty of great cities and areas to ride in the South, but I have yet to see one that is particularly commuter friendly. Some more so than others perhaps, but nothing to compare with places like Portland, OR, Minneapolis, MI, or Madison, WI. That said, things have improved a lot in my city, Raleigh, NC. We have more than 100 miles of bike trails, which used to be a rather disjointed collection of short trails. However, the city has been gradually improving the network so you can actually ride fairly significant distances on very nice MUTs. The Neuse River Trail, which is nearly complete, will be more than 30 miles long when completed later this summer. With connecting trails, you will be able to ride a metric century without hardly riding on any roads at all.

Raleigh's bike trail network is aimed more at recreational riding than commuting. There are still very few bike lanes or paths in areas where people are likely to be commuting, but the city is in the process of adding more. Eg, they recently added an intermittent bike lane along the busiest street on my regular commute route, which happens to be one of the few east-west corridors in the northern suburbs.

I was in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago. The infrastructure was what you would expect for a larger-older city. In spite of that, there seemed to be a pretty robust cycling culture among the locals, which scores points in my book.

At ~1600 violent crimes per 100000 residents, Memphis ranks 4th on Forbes' list of most dangerous cities. Probably not a day-to-day issue if one rides briskly... I just recalled having read that recently.

Disclaimer: I've driven through Memphis several times, but have never lived there or visited for an extended stay, so can't testify personally.

hehehehehehe... try it on an SS. :)

My guess is that it's probably like a lot of cities in that how dangerous it is has a lot to do with where exactly within the city you are and the lifestyle you lead. When moving to the city (Minneapolis, not Memphis) 15 years ago, some of the people we knew thought we had lost our minds and that we'd spend half our time dodging bullets.

It's not really like that. ;)

I'm not saying that violence can't occur anywhere and that there aren't innocent victims. The most common type of crime in our neighborhood is theft, - and bikes are one of things often stolen.

These two quotes capture my feelings about Memphis. I've lived here for nine years, and it definitely took a while to grow on me. Now, I love it, and part of learning to love the city was about getting out in it on my bike. It has also improved hugely in the past few years.

Yes, the city has a high crime rate. The violent crime is largely confined to neighborhoods I don't frequent. Property crime is wide-spread though. Everyone we know has an alarm on the their house. Poverty rates are very high here and our educational system has become a political pawn in a power struggle between the city and its suburbs. (Disclosure: I have very, very little sympathy for the concerns of the suburbs.)

On the other hand, Mid-town and East Memphis are wonderful. Great grocery stores and specialty food shops, restaurants and other shopping, public spaces and parks. There's a wonderful greenline leading from Midtown out to the suburbs. Riverside drive used to be a four-lane divided road, but now the western two lanes have been permanently closed to traffic and serve as a protected bike/pedestrian path. One of the bridges across the Missisissippi is being converted into a bike path that will connect Riverside drive in Memphis to Main Street in West Memphis (a city on the Arkansas side of the river).

I love the people here. I love the culture, which is much more industrial, gritty, bluesy delta culture than the more Bible-belt and country music culture of other parts of the south. I embrace the challenges, and no longer think of them as "what is wrong with Memphis." Now they are my problems too, and I want to be part of working out the answers.

So, I don't want to give the impression that this is a perfect place. But I do think it is a good place, and becoming an awesome one, especially with respect to biking.

I grew up in New Orleans and rode there for many years. It's hit and miss. The city has serious, long-term issues that were exposed by Katrina. It is making serious efforts to deal with issues of poverty and violence but they remain nonetheless issues.

That said, the city is beautiful and has first rate food and music.

As a cycling city, New Orleans has some pluses. It is an old city that predates the automobile. That means that generally you can get from point a to point b without having to ride on a major road. Plus the weather is rideable year around but summers can be very tough.

I think the major point when you're looking to relocate is the relationship between your job and shopping locations, and your residence. If you can stay in older parts of a town (say, built before 1960), there's a lot of neat places to live. After that, and you start getting into an imitation Los Angeles: suburban neighborhoods isolated by limited access roads and major surface roads that take some foolish courage to ride.

If you land a job on the outskirts of any large town or city, you're going to need some mojo to get to that job. Likewise, if you move into a nice new suburb outside the beltline and work downtown, good luck! But if you can land a job closer to "downtown" and find a house or apartment within 5 miles or so, you've got a very good chance of being able to find small, parallel, residential streets on the grid that are pleasant to cycle.

I noticed that there were a lot of fat tire bikes. Understandable.

Someone posted about this a month or two ago:

30 Day Car-Free Challenge | #carfreememphis ? City of Memphis Green Lanes

I found it interesting to read some of the blog posts, even though I'm far from Memphis, and have never been there.

Heat index of 99 in Raleigh just before going-home time yesterday. I broke a sweat just wrenching on a bike... at midnight.

Savvanah, GA seems to have more bicycles than cars.