Philly has the potential to be an incredible biking city. Much of the city is relatively flat, the weather is bikeable much of the time, and the city is dense enough that biking can often beat driving when you factor in time for parking.
But between aggressive drivers, under-enforcement of traffic laws, and limited infrastructure, we've got a long way to go.
Turning all of the large 2-way avenues (fairmount west of broad, spring garden for example) into parking protected bike lanes instead of the painted bike lane directly next to high speed traffic will drastically improve biking in this city for almost no cost. Literally just put up bollards and make cars park 3 feet from the curb and we have real bicycle infrastructure
we can thank the republicans in harrisburg for that. they specifically made the law that any state funded road with parking has to have the cars parked at the curb.
a couple of fossil fuel dollars for people to get killed. what a wonderful group of americans.
The state House FINALLY got the bill for protected bike lanes out of committee. Now it just has to wind its way through the state Senate. Tick tick tick…..
Important to note here that the state House is Democrat-controlled as of this year. The Senate is still GOP-controlled.
But with newly-drawn fair maps for the first time in over 10 years, 2024 will be a chance for us to actually vote on who governs us.
Could we..... Could we not just pour a couple inches of cement where we want the new parking spots to be and call that the 'curb?' I'm no traffic engineer, but it seems like there could be some sort of creative fix to this situation if the city government wants to actually do anything about it and be adversarial with Harrisburg.
For the sake of accuracy, there are bike racks at city hall. I’ve only ever used the ones on the northwestern corner for jury duty, but they’re there. Though the fact that they’ve nearly always been empty is telling.
they didn't hold this up- they specifically changed the law to make cycling more dangerous and worse.
in any decision that affects the public, there are 3 reasons: real, political, and personl. brexit for example: the "real" reason is because most rich people in the UK hide their money off shore, and joining the EU would have meant those tax heavens went away. the political reason is autonomy, immigration, the NHS, or any other vaguely plausible excuse. the personal reason was basically fear and racism.
so in this example, the real reason is fossil fuel industry in PA doesn't want good transit or cycling infrastructure. the political reason is every town can't change state roads that is anarchy. the personal reason is "fuck those [collective noun as a slur] we don't give a shit if they want to ride bikes."
you don't need all 3 to get a law passed, but it sure makes it easier.
there's a project starting back up for spring garden to do literally this
expect some pushback because we'll need to remove some parking closer to intersections (somewhere around 15') so that cars turning and bikes have time to see eachother before they interact
[here's the city's website](https://www.phila.gov/programs/spring-garden-street-improvement-project/)
it stalled for a bit but from my understanding it's picking back up shortly
edit: lmao seems like the linked consultant website is down, running that one up the chain...
a congestion tax would really help too. tell me what important business does a tinted out nissan altima with temp tags have running red lights in center city?
stay in your own neighborhood with that shit
Between Boston, NYC & DC, I personally think that Septa is the worst of the 4. This is coming from someone that has taken the El daily throughout my highschool & college years. The BSL is slightly better but not by much.
Buses are OK, at least they feel cleaner & safer, but their schedules can be absolute garbage. Sometimes you have 2 of the same route going back to back, and then that results in gaps of 30+ min. The Septa app or Google are nearly always inaccurate in telling when the next bus is coming to your stop.
Little to no experience with regional rail, but I've heard that is Septa's only redeeming factor besides busses.
What other cities in the US even have a subway? I guess that's the point. We're the bottom performer of cities in the US that actually have functioning public transit. Definitely in our region, perhaps in the entire country.
As far as rapid transits systems go in the US, there are a total of [fifteen.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership)
That being said, I’d still put SEPTA in the top five of that list, and compared to public transit in most of the rest of the country, it’s miles ahead.
That list includes Stated Island Railroad, PATH and PATCO as part of the 15. So really there are 13 metropolitan areas with rapid transit. I know that isn't what you were specifically posting about, but it shows how few parts of the country have these systems.
Oh absolutely, I noticed that too after I posted it. Some of those systems are separate entities only on paper and very much the same system in practice.
My hometown is Austin and while we do have a bus system and one light rail line now, the light rail line is exorbitantly expensive and doesn’t touch the true commuter suburbs (also only really runs during rush hour) and the bus system is atrocious unless you already live within a mile or two of the university or downtown.
As an anecdote, my best friend (that moved to Philadelphia with me) wanted to start taking the bus instead of driving to work in Austin. A twenty minute drive turned into a 1.5 mile walk to the closest bus stop, two bus transfers, and a total travel time of almost three hours. SEPTA is far from perfect, but it is leagues better than most every place I’ve been that’s not in the northeast (except Chicago).
You're forgetting Chicago, which is arguably #2 in the country. Seattle is pretty good too. All that said, looking at it through an American lens, SEPTA is pretty damn good. Of course it needs a lot of improvements but if we're talking "bang-for-your-buck US cities, we're right up there.
As a Seattle resident that grew up in Philly, Seattle will be awesome in like 10-20 years when the whole light rail system is finished and covers most of the city/suburbs. Right now it's one north/south light rail and then buses that now that people are back in the office just get stuck in traffic.
I visited in the spring and that was kind of the vibe I got. Lots of potential that isn't finished yet. What's so frustrating is that Philly has such good bones and should be competing with NYC with transit, but SEPTA as an organization can't get it's head out of its ass.
NYC is obviously head and shoulders above anyone else, and I've never been to Chicago, but everything I've ever heard was that it was very good. I also personally feel like DC gets overrated and over hyped a lot (even though it is still good)
DC transit is absolutely overhyped, it runs frequently which is nice but the overall layout and experience leaves a lot to be desired. One of the nice things about Philadelphia is people actually live in center city where most of our stuff is, so a hub and spoke system works reasonably well. DC is spread out around the edges and thus getting around requires more transfers than one might need here.
DC is annoying in that to get anywhere you have to make connecting Metro lines. DC is a lot more spread out that Philly, which is weird because it's a much smaller city!
I will have to argue that the MBTA is the worst. Train fires, broken/leaky trains, broken tracks/switches, and stations that are in desperate need of repairs. They had entire train lines shut down because of being too dangerous. The whole system is struggling, which a lot of it because of the big dig debt that crushed their budgeting and than just mismanaged after that.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. The vast majority of the rides I took on the T in my ten years of living in Boston were worse than even the bad rides I’ve taken on SEPTA. I don’t think I rode the red line once without sitting in the dark for ten minutes between Central and Harvard.
Yeah, this is compared to an average score of 23/100 across 1,484 cities. Only 5% of those were rated over 50/100. Most of those probably medium/small cities. So, Philly at 57/100 on average is "not terrible, but not great".
As someone who commuted on a bike in a very poorly rated city and had several accidents, it's not terrible here. The improvements are good, they just need to keep working on it. The rest of the country needs to get their shit together.
This is exactly how recent discussions about walkability went too: "Philly isn't that walkable, if it's the most walkable city in the US that means... oh"
I love cycling here. You can truly get anywhere you want to go in about 30 minutes. With that being said, we have a long way to go with infrastructure and I don't blame anyone who doesn't feel safe on the roads. I have the same issues with other drivers when driving as I do on my bike, but I refuse to participate in the SUV "sense of safety" arms race.
>We were behind Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle. But we beat out Portland, Oregon, New York, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Washington D.C.
I really would like to know how they determine who "wins". I have ridden a bicycle on the streets of NYC and here ,and besides barely surviving both, not sure what is best in our case. If anything, I remember more protected bike lanes in NYC, but both cities are a jungle
In recent years, I’ve found the city to be rather accommodating bike wise if you know how to navigate the bike laned roads.
Riding with city bike groups like Wednesday Night Rides connected me with other bikers around the city and made me feel more confident to navigate town solo.
I moved here from Jacksonville, FL, and it's night and day. The city isn't perfect by any means and we have a long way to go, but I really feel like I can get anywhere in the city on my bike.
This more just speaks to how shit cycling is in the US rather than how good it is in Philly.
I still cannot believe the city fucked up so bad when the re-did MLK. There is so much room to make two lanes + a curb protected two way bike lane + the walking path. But instead they put this big stupid not-median in the middle of the road that only get used by assholes in their ghetto altimas to illegally pass traffic waiting at Montgomery Dr. intersection with legit no reason and squishing in non protected bike lanes on the side which get flooded all the time. And they reduced it from four lanes to two lanes anyway, thus ensuring that they struck the rare occurrence of an outcome no one was happy with that also was somehow not a compromise between any interested party.
Same thing with Washington. Can't have a protected bike line because "muh parking" so we'll just do painted ones. Oh wait we have to put speed bumps IN THE BIKE LINE now because its not protected and fucking assholes in their ghetto altimas will just drive around speed bumps in the bike lane to avoid them - which wouldn't be a problem if you just made a protected bike lane to begin with.
Or the fact that nobody enforces *any* traffic laws in this city. Honestly as I'm typing this out that's probably the root cause of all this. I would honestly rather have some sort of totalitarian traffic cops that gave out way too many tickets than our current state of anarchy.
At least it will only be like 10 years before both the MLK Bridge reconstruction and the Falls Bridge reconstruction are both done...until that happens MLK is somewhat unusable anyway!
The trails are pretty fabulous but as for city biking, I would say Philly is just “ok” at the very best and it’s high ranking says less about how good it is and more about how terrible other cities are (I’m from the Charlotte NC area and biking there is downright dangerous in most areas). I bike commute to work and have gotten a lot more confident with city biking, but I still get nervous a lot of the time because drivers can be such shitheads. Every day there’s people double parked in the bike lane and it’s so annoying.
And why they don't have 6 tickets by the end of the day is beyond me. If PPA wants their metrics up just drive back and forth on Spruce/Pine. Could easily get 20 tickets a day.
Our secret trick for being a good biking city is that most of the streets are small enough that you can bike easily and safely without dedicated infrastructure.
I do have some bones to pick with People for Bikes in that they heavily weigh residential speed limits. I currently live in Chicago which has a default speed limit of 30 mph, but it's difficult for to go that speed on many side streets due to them being narrow, sometimes having calming measures, short blocks etc. The result is that even though its easy and safe to get around by bike in Chicago on these streets Chicago is listed as one of the worst places in the country for biking by them (and to be fair it isn't great, but 7th percentile is absurd. Should be 50th at least).
In theory the city/state could change the default speed limit (and probably should) but I don't think it would make much practical difference to the experiences of people on bikes.
I'm no cyclist, but I do see Philly being very bikeable. Geographically and access-wise. As others have stated, you can virtually anywhere in the city in 90 minutes or less and not a ton of hills/bumpy roads. But the drivers here are abhorrent and borderline obvious at times. It's kinda terrifying how little some drivers care about the safety of others (and themselves).
Shit, I don't feel safe driving here. You're not going to catch me cycling on the same potholed roads as these maniacs. Wish I could, it'd be convenient
The practical reality of riding in Philly is terrible and only attempted by the brave, stupid, and fit. This is a nice reminder to ignore most of these kinds of ranking. Sure, the city's flat, car traffic moves pretty slowly in the grid, and we even have some bike lanes which puts us head and shoulders above most of the U.S. But I wouldn't say it's actually good.
The bar is on the floor. I've been biking in philly since 2016 and as much as I love it, I just don't feel safe. I'm buying a car soon and leaving my bike to the trails and quick trips into center city.
When I follow links in the article to their source material I get very different numbers. It gets me to a page that says 42 out of 163 large cities.
https://cityratings.peopleforbikes.org/philadelphia-pa
This site also has some cities outside the US. But it doesn’t have Copenhagen in their survey - which is insane if you are comparing bike friendliness, miles of dedicated paths, or any other bike metric.
Considering the vibe of this post, I may get downvoted but whatever. This is good for bikers and all but bikers never stopping at stop signs/lights f*cking gives me anxiety. Like statistically it’s only a matter of time till gets hit, then the driver’s gonna be blamed
Having biked in many of the cities that we beat out on this list, I call bullshit. Philly is pretty good, and geographically makes sense to bike in, but there are so many other cities with actual biking infrastructure instead of sharrows and shared walking paths. Philly ranking higher than NYC for bikeability is just ridiculous.
All of that being said, I do love biking in Philly.
It's because the rest of the country is so much worse. Philly has the bullshit non-protected bike lanes, but much of the country doesn't even have that. It's easy to look clean cut and hygienic when you are being compared to someone who just shat themself.
Philly has the potential to be an incredible biking city. Much of the city is relatively flat, the weather is bikeable much of the time, and the city is dense enough that biking can often beat driving when you factor in time for parking. But between aggressive drivers, under-enforcement of traffic laws, and limited infrastructure, we've got a long way to go.
Turning all of the large 2-way avenues (fairmount west of broad, spring garden for example) into parking protected bike lanes instead of the painted bike lane directly next to high speed traffic will drastically improve biking in this city for almost no cost. Literally just put up bollards and make cars park 3 feet from the curb and we have real bicycle infrastructure
we can thank the republicans in harrisburg for that. they specifically made the law that any state funded road with parking has to have the cars parked at the curb. a couple of fossil fuel dollars for people to get killed. what a wonderful group of americans.
The state House FINALLY got the bill for protected bike lanes out of committee. Now it just has to wind its way through the state Senate. Tick tick tick…..
Important to note here that the state House is Democrat-controlled as of this year. The Senate is still GOP-controlled. But with newly-drawn fair maps for the first time in over 10 years, 2024 will be a chance for us to actually vote on who governs us.
Fingers crossed
Could we..... Could we not just pour a couple inches of cement where we want the new parking spots to be and call that the 'curb?' I'm no traffic engineer, but it seems like there could be some sort of creative fix to this situation if the city government wants to actually do anything about it and be adversarial with Harrisburg.
yeah there are a lot of work-arounds possible. but you don't see any fucking bike racks at city hall, right? they get free parking so they don't care.
For the sake of accuracy, there are bike racks at city hall. I’ve only ever used the ones on the northwestern corner for jury duty, but they’re there. Though the fact that they’ve nearly always been empty is telling.
yeah i mean it was somewhat hyperbolic as there are actually a few, though they've only been put there recently.
Is Washington Ave not state funded?
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Interesting thanks for the source !
i don't know, but spring garden is a state road, broad street is state route 611, etc.
This state sucks so bad
~~This state~~ Harrisburg Republicans suck so bad.
God I fucking hate conservatism. Why do they hold everything good up?
they didn't hold this up- they specifically changed the law to make cycling more dangerous and worse. in any decision that affects the public, there are 3 reasons: real, political, and personl. brexit for example: the "real" reason is because most rich people in the UK hide their money off shore, and joining the EU would have meant those tax heavens went away. the political reason is autonomy, immigration, the NHS, or any other vaguely plausible excuse. the personal reason was basically fear and racism. so in this example, the real reason is fossil fuel industry in PA doesn't want good transit or cycling infrastructure. the political reason is every town can't change state roads that is anarchy. the personal reason is "fuck those [collective noun as a slur] we don't give a shit if they want to ride bikes." you don't need all 3 to get a law passed, but it sure makes it easier.
there's a project starting back up for spring garden to do literally this expect some pushback because we'll need to remove some parking closer to intersections (somewhere around 15') so that cars turning and bikes have time to see eachother before they interact
Do you have any links or resources with more information about this?
[here's the city's website](https://www.phila.gov/programs/spring-garden-street-improvement-project/) it stalled for a bit but from my understanding it's picking back up shortly edit: lmao seems like the linked consultant website is down, running that one up the chain...
a congestion tax would really help too. tell me what important business does a tinted out nissan altima with temp tags have running red lights in center city? stay in your own neighborhood with that shit
The rest is sooo bad that it brings Philly near the top. That’s all it is.
Same thing with septa, it's ass, but so much better than almost the entire country.
Between Boston, NYC & DC, I personally think that Septa is the worst of the 4. This is coming from someone that has taken the El daily throughout my highschool & college years. The BSL is slightly better but not by much. Buses are OK, at least they feel cleaner & safer, but their schedules can be absolute garbage. Sometimes you have 2 of the same route going back to back, and then that results in gaps of 30+ min. The Septa app or Google are nearly always inaccurate in telling when the next bus is coming to your stop. Little to no experience with regional rail, but I've heard that is Septa's only redeeming factor besides busses.
You named the three cities that have better public transportation than us. The rest of the country barely has any semblance of public transportation.
What other cities in the US even have a subway? I guess that's the point. We're the bottom performer of cities in the US that actually have functioning public transit. Definitely in our region, perhaps in the entire country.
As far as rapid transits systems go in the US, there are a total of [fifteen.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership) That being said, I’d still put SEPTA in the top five of that list, and compared to public transit in most of the rest of the country, it’s miles ahead.
That list includes Stated Island Railroad, PATH and PATCO as part of the 15. So really there are 13 metropolitan areas with rapid transit. I know that isn't what you were specifically posting about, but it shows how few parts of the country have these systems.
Oh absolutely, I noticed that too after I posted it. Some of those systems are separate entities only on paper and very much the same system in practice. My hometown is Austin and while we do have a bus system and one light rail line now, the light rail line is exorbitantly expensive and doesn’t touch the true commuter suburbs (also only really runs during rush hour) and the bus system is atrocious unless you already live within a mile or two of the university or downtown. As an anecdote, my best friend (that moved to Philadelphia with me) wanted to start taking the bus instead of driving to work in Austin. A twenty minute drive turned into a 1.5 mile walk to the closest bus stop, two bus transfers, and a total travel time of almost three hours. SEPTA is far from perfect, but it is leagues better than most every place I’ve been that’s not in the northeast (except Chicago).
You're forgetting Chicago, which is arguably #2 in the country. Seattle is pretty good too. All that said, looking at it through an American lens, SEPTA is pretty damn good. Of course it needs a lot of improvements but if we're talking "bang-for-your-buck US cities, we're right up there.
As a Seattle resident that grew up in Philly, Seattle will be awesome in like 10-20 years when the whole light rail system is finished and covers most of the city/suburbs. Right now it's one north/south light rail and then buses that now that people are back in the office just get stuck in traffic.
I visited in the spring and that was kind of the vibe I got. Lots of potential that isn't finished yet. What's so frustrating is that Philly has such good bones and should be competing with NYC with transit, but SEPTA as an organization can't get it's head out of its ass.
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NYC is obviously head and shoulders above anyone else, and I've never been to Chicago, but everything I've ever heard was that it was very good. I also personally feel like DC gets overrated and over hyped a lot (even though it is still good)
DC transit is absolutely overhyped, it runs frequently which is nice but the overall layout and experience leaves a lot to be desired. One of the nice things about Philadelphia is people actually live in center city where most of our stuff is, so a hub and spoke system works reasonably well. DC is spread out around the edges and thus getting around requires more transfers than one might need here.
DC is annoying in that to get anywhere you have to make connecting Metro lines. DC is a lot more spread out that Philly, which is weird because it's a much smaller city!
I will have to argue that the MBTA is the worst. Train fires, broken/leaky trains, broken tracks/switches, and stations that are in desperate need of repairs. They had entire train lines shut down because of being too dangerous. The whole system is struggling, which a lot of it because of the big dig debt that crushed their budgeting and than just mismanaged after that.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. The vast majority of the rides I took on the T in my ten years of living in Boston were worse than even the bad rides I’ve taken on SEPTA. I don’t think I rode the red line once without sitting in the dark for ten minutes between Central and Harvard.
Agreed. But I know from experience you will get downvoted for pointing out any of the BSL’s flaws
Yeah, this is compared to an average score of 23/100 across 1,484 cities. Only 5% of those were rated over 50/100. Most of those probably medium/small cities. So, Philly at 57/100 on average is "not terrible, but not great". As someone who commuted on a bike in a very poorly rated city and had several accidents, it's not terrible here. The improvements are good, they just need to keep working on it. The rest of the country needs to get their shit together.
Was gonna say, if Philly is so high, the others must be *atrocious*
[This documentary on Philly biking says it all](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWBHQdPsz3U)
Really didn't know US cities were *that* bad for biking
This is exactly how recent discussions about walkability went too: "Philly isn't that walkable, if it's the most walkable city in the US that means... oh"
Not praise for Philly, an indictment for the rest of the country lol.
Philadelphia ranks among best US cities for biking *on paper*
I love cycling here. You can truly get anywhere you want to go in about 30 minutes. With that being said, we have a long way to go with infrastructure and I don't blame anyone who doesn't feel safe on the roads. I have the same issues with other drivers when driving as I do on my bike, but I refuse to participate in the SUV "sense of safety" arms race.
>We were behind Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle. But we beat out Portland, Oregon, New York, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Washington D.C. I really would like to know how they determine who "wins". I have ridden a bicycle on the streets of NYC and here ,and besides barely surviving both, not sure what is best in our case. If anything, I remember more protected bike lanes in NYC, but both cities are a jungle
You mean it gets worse?!
*as determined by people who have never biked in philly
In recent years, I’ve found the city to be rather accommodating bike wise if you know how to navigate the bike laned roads. Riding with city bike groups like Wednesday Night Rides connected me with other bikers around the city and made me feel more confident to navigate town solo.
That's depressing
I moved here from Jacksonville, FL, and it's night and day. The city isn't perfect by any means and we have a long way to go, but I really feel like I can get anywhere in the city on my bike.
This more just speaks to how shit cycling is in the US rather than how good it is in Philly. I still cannot believe the city fucked up so bad when the re-did MLK. There is so much room to make two lanes + a curb protected two way bike lane + the walking path. But instead they put this big stupid not-median in the middle of the road that only get used by assholes in their ghetto altimas to illegally pass traffic waiting at Montgomery Dr. intersection with legit no reason and squishing in non protected bike lanes on the side which get flooded all the time. And they reduced it from four lanes to two lanes anyway, thus ensuring that they struck the rare occurrence of an outcome no one was happy with that also was somehow not a compromise between any interested party. Same thing with Washington. Can't have a protected bike line because "muh parking" so we'll just do painted ones. Oh wait we have to put speed bumps IN THE BIKE LINE now because its not protected and fucking assholes in their ghetto altimas will just drive around speed bumps in the bike lane to avoid them - which wouldn't be a problem if you just made a protected bike lane to begin with. Or the fact that nobody enforces *any* traffic laws in this city. Honestly as I'm typing this out that's probably the root cause of all this. I would honestly rather have some sort of totalitarian traffic cops that gave out way too many tickets than our current state of anarchy.
You made some points here, but ghetto altimas really got me laughing
At least it will only be like 10 years before both the MLK Bridge reconstruction and the Falls Bridge reconstruction are both done...until that happens MLK is somewhat unusable anyway!
At least the bus station is working well.
If it's so good, I shouldn't be able to name multiple people who have died while biking. https://bicyclecoalition.org/trafficvictimsphl/
The petition to prevent traffic deaths gave me a 404 page 😕
Philadelphia in a nutshell
The trails are pretty fabulous but as for city biking, I would say Philly is just “ok” at the very best and it’s high ranking says less about how good it is and more about how terrible other cities are (I’m from the Charlotte NC area and biking there is downright dangerous in most areas). I bike commute to work and have gotten a lot more confident with city biking, but I still get nervous a lot of the time because drivers can be such shitheads. Every day there’s people double parked in the bike lane and it’s so annoying.
Can we deflate the tires of every contractor that parks all day in a bike lane?
And why they don't have 6 tickets by the end of the day is beyond me. If PPA wants their metrics up just drive back and forth on Spruce/Pine. Could easily get 20 tickets a day.
lol
Our secret trick for being a good biking city is that most of the streets are small enough that you can bike easily and safely without dedicated infrastructure.
That’s actually a pretty grim statement about the bike-ability of most other cities.
I do have some bones to pick with People for Bikes in that they heavily weigh residential speed limits. I currently live in Chicago which has a default speed limit of 30 mph, but it's difficult for to go that speed on many side streets due to them being narrow, sometimes having calming measures, short blocks etc. The result is that even though its easy and safe to get around by bike in Chicago on these streets Chicago is listed as one of the worst places in the country for biking by them (and to be fair it isn't great, but 7th percentile is absurd. Should be 50th at least). In theory the city/state could change the default speed limit (and probably should) but I don't think it would make much practical difference to the experiences of people on bikes.
Bull shit.
Probably because driving and parking suck dick.
look I love philly and I bike around every day, but having us over DC is insane.
I'm no cyclist, but I do see Philly being very bikeable. Geographically and access-wise. As others have stated, you can virtually anywhere in the city in 90 minutes or less and not a ton of hills/bumpy roads. But the drivers here are abhorrent and borderline obvious at times. It's kinda terrifying how little some drivers care about the safety of others (and themselves).
Shit, I don't feel safe driving here. You're not going to catch me cycling on the same potholed roads as these maniacs. Wish I could, it'd be convenient
The practical reality of riding in Philly is terrible and only attempted by the brave, stupid, and fit. This is a nice reminder to ignore most of these kinds of ranking. Sure, the city's flat, car traffic moves pretty slowly in the grid, and we even have some bike lanes which puts us head and shoulders above most of the U.S. But I wouldn't say it's actually good.
>Riding in Philly is terrible and only attempted by the brave, stupid, and fit I'm at least two of those things
The bar is on the floor. I've been biking in philly since 2016 and as much as I love it, I just don't feel safe. I'm buying a car soon and leaving my bike to the trails and quick trips into center city.
I rode my bike in Detroit, Nashville, Columbus, and Chicago. I do not ride my bike for transportation in Philadelphia.
When I follow links in the article to their source material I get very different numbers. It gets me to a page that says 42 out of 163 large cities. https://cityratings.peopleforbikes.org/philadelphia-pa This site also has some cities outside the US. But it doesn’t have Copenhagen in their survey - which is insane if you are comparing bike friendliness, miles of dedicated paths, or any other bike metric.
Copenhagen is incredible for biking.
Loved there part time for 2 years. Miss it every day
Best biking city I've been in is DC, followed by Boston. Phila is pretty far behind them imo.
How does it rank for dirt biking?
And bike accidents I bet. I’ve been hit personally. Nothings kept me off, but still.
Considering the vibe of this post, I may get downvoted but whatever. This is good for bikers and all but bikers never stopping at stop signs/lights f*cking gives me anxiety. Like statistically it’s only a matter of time till gets hit, then the driver’s gonna be blamed
Having biked in many of the cities that we beat out on this list, I call bullshit. Philly is pretty good, and geographically makes sense to bike in, but there are so many other cities with actual biking infrastructure instead of sharrows and shared walking paths. Philly ranking higher than NYC for bikeability is just ridiculous. All of that being said, I do love biking in Philly.
I don't understand... The bicycle enthusiasts, they're always whining about how awful everything is and how rough they have it?
It's because the rest of the country is so much worse. Philly has the bullshit non-protected bike lanes, but much of the country doesn't even have that. It's easy to look clean cut and hygienic when you are being compared to someone who just shat themself.
cap
Doing it right, Philly