Can the Best US Bike Cities Compete with Europe?

Meanwhile, NYC hasn't laid any bike lanes in the last year.

They can’t even compete with the best canadian bike cities, let alone Europe 😅

How the hell do that bridge in Gary cost 4.5 mill 😂

Need and American Cup for Cycle lanes

Unfortunately cycling is all about cost-efficiency. Particularly for small nations like Netherlands.
This includes ALL cost: Deployment, Maintenance, Space, Throughput. A lot of people forget particularly Space and Throughput.
You can put 10 bikes in the same space as a car for storage and you can have plenty of cyclist space for a single car lane.
Particularly for short distances (for a car, what is short to medium for a cyclist) the amount of space you need for car storage alone is absurd.

I am Dutch and I must say your city looks absolutely amazing! I think the cycling infrastructure is just as good as ours. Well done 😊

Amsterdam has nearly nothing to do with the Netherlands. It is a multicultural hellhole with lots of students, leftists/globalists, foreigners and some nice buildings. Next time, please visit the actual Netherlands.

Seems like the price of bicycle infrastructure is to live in a left-wing state like California, with wokeness, gun prohibition, horrible policing geared for gun control, criminal anarchy and vagrancy in places like San Fran, poor self-defense laws, warped prison releases, public schools run by Democrats, promoting or forcing child mutilation, gender confusion, insane pronouns, homosexuality, transvestitism, transsexualism, non-binarism, basically all these mental illnesses aimed at children, for grooming, etc. In fact, I went to CSU Chico and public schools in California before then, but the idea of living there now or having children there would be madness. Nothing could be worth that!

It's funny how Dutch people are entering the comment section as if we were all born with bicycle infrastructure expertise, lol

I grew up in Scottsdale AZ, a city infamous for being extremely suburban. It however, has an incredible bike path network spanning most of the city called the Greenbelt

A biker bridge for 4,5 million dollars???It must be made from gold to cost this much!!!!

Its the city Utrecht and not Utrich!!

Here in Baltimore they are getting bike lanes up in many places, though once the bike lane is there, I feel it is left to just deteriorate and gather trash (I once had to dodge a broken vodka bottle and a dead rat within 7 feet one another!). Yes, do build bike lanes with proper separation from traffic and opening car doors, but please maintain them well!

I'd love to see you collaborate with @buildthelanes

How the hell is Berkeley ranked #5? Whoever made this list has not lived in Berkeley.

When USA high school children go to school on bike, you have closed the gap with the Dutch 😊

former gary resident(also near hammond indiana) i've never seen a bike when i lived there.

NO

I live in Singapore and infrastructure for cyclists were pretty much non existence five years ago. A while ago goverment put aside one billion dollars to build bike lanes with beautiful trees and plants along side all over the city. They have been promoting citizens to use bikes more than cars. Mind you that Singapore has one of the best public transportation system in the world. It is not becasue Singapore needs it but citizens and government understand the benefits of cycling. If citizens demand it, i am sure American cities can do it too.

I don't think using pedestrian paths as bike paths deserves a full check mark. Pedestrians and all their accoutrements (taking the whole path, walking the wrong direction on the path, free-range children, invisible pet leashes, recliners and picnickers, etc) are a major hassle and hazard to cyclists. Those paths are satisfactory for someone on a relaxed joyride, but even then you have to be super cautious and can't get too relaxed about it. They're definitely not for the commuter. Notice all those clips you show of Amsterdam don't show pedestrians intermingling with the cyclists!

Can you comment or do a video on LA or Long Beach's master bike plan? Does LA have a hope of becoming "the west coast Amsterdam"?

And once again Europe is used like it was a homogeneous country and not a whole continent with dozens of countries with vastly different standards when it comes to everything and especially infrastructure.

The best thing here is if American States are competing for best cycling infrastructure or infrastructure in general that is pedestrian and bike friendly then that´s the best thing for the US to do things better and improve overtime to the point that people are happy with the results.
But do it to let it benefit everyone not to fight over petty things that turns political over nothing.

Seattle has been pouring money into bike lanes/bike infrastructure and I'm here for it, will probably get my first road bike soon because of it!

Weather should not be an issue. Rain, snow, hail, thunder and lightning. Its a mindset.

As long as cities keep subsidizing drivers with millions of acres of free and discounted car storage and making density illegal, the US will always have a huge cycling deficit.

I live in Holland. The answer: No!

As an American who has actually cycled on the bike paths in Netherlands and the US I would say the closest to the Dutch model design regarding true grade separation protection between auto, bikes and pedestrian in the US are these top 3. Best quality

1. Indianapolis Cultural Trail (most consistent)
2. Philadelphia's Delaware Avenue River Trail.
3. Cambridge, Ma Western Avenue bike path

The problem I see is a lot of US cities are not doing enough of these types of these true grade protected design. Painted bike box, stripe lanes using plastic flex post just don't cut it. Trying to force cyclist to even share the road with auto traffic is down right dangerous. Are the top 3 perfect? May be if every street in these cities were consistent like in the Netherlands. If you had more of these design to every city in America a lot of these road sharing issues would just go away. Unfortunately, not every city will have a Delaware Avenue or Cultural Trail quality design to actually give true grade protection for cyclists from auto traffic .

They need to remove blind spots at driveways so the drivers can see bikes coming and bikes can see the drivers coming.

Whst aboit cycling infra in Texas..?
Texans hit like here

I lived in Davis, CA (#2 on the list) as a grad student and while it's very feasible for a single person to live there without a car and depend on their bike for most of their transit needs, it's still a very car-dependent city for families. There are parts of the city, particularly on the campus, that feel much like Amsterdam with crowds of bicycles and a fairly walkable yet bike friendly downtown. But outside of those places, it's still built as a car-dependent suburb with an odd bike path or bike lane here and there that you won't normally see in other cities.

dang, my town is in the top 12... I didn't even know it was considered a city

Within seconds I recognized San Luis Obispo. When I lived there biking was my main form of transportation next to walking. Was even closed enough to bike to the beach on occasions

It's good to have a more positive perspective. Not Jus Bikes is great, but he's way too aggressive with his anti United Statetism sometimes

you said a good point about priorities: Cities in North America are usually plain hostile to everything but cars. European cities often try the plain opposite: Driving a car is the least welcomed form of transportation in a city and heavily discouraged. During the transition this even goes into "the more drivers you piss off, the better the results will be".

when he said "but is it Europe good?", i laughed so hard

we as americans are so desperate that if city throw us a bone (painted bike lane, or wider side walk along a 6 lane dangerous stroad with numerous deadly drive ways) we are happy as hell. what a country

For a large city, Montreal has done quite a good job with bike infrastructure.

Of course the US can.
Remember a lot of European cycle infrastructure is terrible. Only the Dutch and to a lesser extent Denmark do it right.

I live in Boulder, Co and bike every day to the University. But even with pretty good cycling infrastructure you'll be hard pressed to get people out of their BMWs to cycle. Feels like the numbers over the years are dropping inversely to the influx of wealth. That being said there are plenty of sport cyclists that ride tons on weekends but the bike racks in front of most stores are not heavily used.

I have seen some upward ticks with ebikes and the now cool thing is to cargo bike your kid to pre-school which looks like loads of fun.

I think your downtown example is really important. It goes to show that bike infrastructure doesn't have to be an all in major project. It can be little relatively inexpensive cheap projects that incrementally improve over time.

I want to start riding my bike to my grocery store which is a 10 minute 2.2 mile trip both ways on car and after watching Not Just Bikes and City Beautiful, have new/changed ideas on some things. What kind of bike and how do i transport 3-6 bags on a bike? What equipment should i get?

May I recommend to also check Copenhagen. It is even more bicycle city than Amsterdam. They had a plan to convert 50% of all traffic to bicycles (comparing to 33% in Amsterdam). Copenhagen is the core of modern cities.

I live in Pittsburgh, Pa and a number of years ago probably over 10 they built a bike path that takes you from Western PA to Washington DC.

Just had to mention, living about an hour from Gary. That it's not a good representation for a video like this. Unfortunately Gary is a town that when you go through it, it is almost all abandoned and sadly issues with poverty, crime, gangs. On our way to Chicago me and my friend Tyree would see a few houses that were literally falling apart and we could literally see inside one of them and people were living there. Really sad the history of how it got to where it's at (similar to Detroit) and the corruption there these people have to live through, there's no reason these hoods in the US should not be taken care of with proper infrastructure and better educational systems and facilities and etc. etc. The cycle of poverty and violence will never change if our government continues to ignore stuff like this and only focus on further developing the already rich 1% part of the US.