Comments on: City of Detroit: America’s best urban biking?

By: Todd Scott

Todd Scott — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:11:53 +0000

“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.

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

Where just about everything cool originated | m-bike.org — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:39:12 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Joe Awesome

Joe Awesome — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:03:23 +0000

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!

By: Bill Nesper

Bill Nesper — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:03:36 +0000

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

By: Design New Haven

Design New Haven — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:29:40 +0000

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.

By: alli

alli — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:30:39 +0000

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.

By: Streetsblog Los Angeles » Paying for a More Comfortable Transit Ride

Streetsblog Los Angeles » Paying for a More Comfortable Transit Ride — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:55:31 +0000

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

By: Streetsblog New York City » Paying for a More Comfortable Transit Ride

Streetsblog New York City » Paying for a More Comfortable Transit Ride — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:41:21 +0000

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