City of Detroit: America’s best urban biking?

John R with four one-way vehicle lanes and negligible traffic -- an urban cyclist dream street.

John R with four one-way vehicle lanes and negligible traffic -- an urban cyclist dream street.

We think so.

Apparently former New Yorker Toby Barlow may as well according to this Metromode article:

Toby Barlow finds it ironic that Detroit is known as the “Motor City”, since its flat and relatively calm streets make it the country’s most perfect bicycle city as well.

Yesterday the New York Times ran an opinion piece from Barlow about biking in Detroit:

While bike enthusiasts in most urban areas continue to have to fight for their place on the streets, Detroit has the potential to become a new bicycle utopia. It’s a town just waiting to be taken. With well less than half its peak population, and free of anything resembling a hill, the city and its miles and miles of streets lie open and empty, beckoning. And lately, whether it’s because of the economy or the price of gas or just because it’s a nice thing to do, there are a lot more bikers out riding.

Our abandoned landscape suggests an opportunity that alternative-transportation proponents should consider: instead of raging against their cities’ internal combustion machines, they might consider a tactical retreat to the city that cars have pretty much abandoned.

A Seattle blogger responded with the suggestion of moving to Detroit: “Not now, of course, because it’s warm and sunny in Seattle, and we’re not broke yet.” It’s warm and sunny in Detroit, too.

National Recognition?

Just because Detroit is a bicycle-friendly city, don’t expect to receive a bicycle-friendly designation from the League of American Bicyclists.

The scoring for that award is based on assumptions such as:

  • government has the lead role in developing and managing bicycle facilities
  • the city does not have significant vacant land
  • that urban streets have traffic levels that necessitate bike lanes

None of these assumptions are correct in Detroit and so we do not score well.

Erroneous Benchmarking

And similarly, the Alliance for Biking and Walking is currently benchmarking U.S. cities. Most of the benchmarking questions asked were not relevant to Detroit’s reality, so we can expect to be erroneously scored. (This should not be unexpected as the Alliance’s 2007 benchmarking estimated that the city of Detroit had 34 bike shops and that Detroiter’s spent $92/person annually at these shops!)

In my role as MTGA’s Detroit Greenways Coordinator, I’ve discussed this with the Alliance, but they don’t seem to grasp that not all cities fit their expected mold for bicycle friendliness.

Of course it doesn’t help that they’ve never biked in Detroit either.

It’s apparent that the surveys and assumptions are made so that the cities they expect to score well do so. In other words, recognition is reserved for cities following in Portland’s footsteps.

Detroit’s not. We’re making our own trail.

We may not get recognized by the big nationwide bicycle advocacy groups, but we’re sure to keep getting recognized from cyclists like Barlow and others.

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8 Responses to “City of Detroit: America’s best urban biking?”

  1. Streetsblog New York City » Paying for a More Comfortable Transit Ride Says:

    […] M-bike.org has some thoughts about yesterday's NY Times piece on Detroit's "potential to become a new […]

  2. Streetsblog Los Angeles » Paying for a More Comfortable Transit Ride Says:

    […] M-bike.org has some thoughts about yesterday's NY Times piece on Detroit's "potential to become a new […]

  3. alli Says:

    I hear ya! New Orleans has similar issues (blight, poverty, reduced population, nary a hill in sight) and has a ton of bicyclists – but we also have the worst roads in the western hemisphere and next to no bicycle infrastructure, so we never score high on those organizations’ metrics. It’d be nice if cities like Detroit and New Orleans could be recognized, and get some federal subsidies to continue their citizen-driven path of sustainable transport, since our local/state governments are not going to get it done.

  4. Design New Haven Says:

    Detroit and New Orleans may look nice from an infrastructure perspective, but don’t they show up very low on the Census mode share numbers?

    There are other, even more compact cities, like Boston, Philly, New Haven and Albany that don’t have many bike lanes, but they have extremely high bicycle and pedestrian mode shares. These are the cities I would consider to be the most bike-friendly.

  5. Bill Nesper Says:

    We at League of American Bicyclists would like to enthusiastically urge Detroit to apply for the Bicycle Friendly Community designation. The application is a much more comprehensive assessment than just gathering miles of bike facilities and information on programs that the community government itself is leading. The application review looks at the whole bicycling culture from events, rides, bicycling education, motorist education, planning, bicycle ridership numbers, crash evaluaion, bike parks, bike clubs, commuter challenges, and the list goes on. Please see more about our criteria at http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity.org

  6. Joe Awesome Says:

    I bet Detroit would love to host anyone from the League that is interested in taking a look at how Detroit stacks up outside the metrics!

  7. Where just about everything cool originated | m-bike.org Says:

    […] in the city of Detroit is like nowhere else. As we mentioned before, we don’t just fit the bike-friendly mold that other cities are chasing and that’s just fine. Let’s celebrate and hone what we […]

  8. Todd Scott Says:

    “We at League of American Bicyclists would like to enthusiastically urge Detroit to apply for the Bicycle Friendly Community designation.”

    Bill, It would be a waste of our time. As noted above, the BFC application is designed to score cities like Boulder and Portland. It fails to accurately score shrinking cities such as Detroit. If you are willing to re-evaluate your application and scoring system for cities like Detroit, we would certainly be willing to help.

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