I ride in a fair part of the country and never cease to be amazed by the infrastructure in places like Minnesota or Iowa versus South Carolina or North Carolina. The “frozen North” has unbelievable infrastructure that gets used, the deep south? Fahgettaboudit we are left to fight for every inch of narrow roadway we can command, cut off by interstates, and having no funding in our DOT districts (still trying to get a coherent answer on that one!)

All we can do is keep pushing and riding and being as visible as possible.

Aaron

My opinion – Portland is a sweet bicycle town but outside the city I have been less impressed with the cycling infrastructure.

The Seattle area/sprawl has a more trails and lanes by volume. Portland has us beat on the bicycle culture for sure.

Regardless of ranking, I feel that all cyclists are better off than we were 20 years ago with regards to laws/lanes/trails/safety.

Anchorage has a pretty extensive bike plan in the works. We also just received bronze from the league. Sitka was awarded bronze over a year ago. Juneau is aggressively adding more trails. Both Juneu and Sitka are smaller, denser cities which are crucial to bike-friendliness. Alaska passed a state-wide bicycle and pedestrian plan in 1994. There are 2 new bike advocacy groups, one state-focused, the other Anchorage-focused, to make sure bikes are considered in development. In Anchorage we also have miles and miles of greenbelt trails, a strong bike coop, tons of mountain bikers and snow bikers (rain, sleet or snow). So, don’t count us out.

Alabama will too because of advocacy done by the coop and people like you.

I expect you’ll at least be able to beat out Alaska next year.

Denny- fixed. This was clearly important to you.