With bike weddings, bike parades, hundreds of naked bicyclists, bike fashion shows, popular & interesting cargo bikes, and travelling bike pubs, Portland is #3 on this great bicycle city photo tours list.

Portland has great bicycle facilities (colored bike lanes, bike boxes at intersections, great bike signs, off-road bicycle paths, etc.), a large number of people using the bicycle for transportation, and a bike culture that brings the fun of bicycling to another level.

As a result of these factors and more, Portland was the first large city in the US to achieve the Platinum level Bike Friendly award from the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) — the Platinum level being the highest level possible (above Gold, Silver and Bronze). It is truly a world-class bicycle city now, and the amazing photos in this photo tour help to show that.

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Home of the upcoming climate change conference, Copenhagen is #4 in this great bicycle city photo tour series. With about 55% of trips being by bicycle, Copenhagen is an amazing place to visit or live if you like bicycling.

The photos to follow give you a taste of this great bicycle city. From dogs on bikes to bikes on bikes, from bikes in ice to bike counters, enjoy these great bicycle photos.

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From bicycle lovers to lovers on bikes, bike art to art on bikes, the largest bicycle sharing program in the world to some of the smallest bikers, enjoy this bicycle city photo tour of Paris, France!

Paris doesn’t have a long history as one of the best bicycle cities, but with the introduction of the largest bicycle sharing program in the world, bicycling in Paris has boomed and the city is becoming commonly associated with the bicycle now. Its whole culture is changing due to the bicycle’s increasing relevance in the city’s daily life.

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Groningen would be number one on this list if we were looking at percentage of residents who bicycle for transportation purposes. About 57% of travel in Groningen is by bicycle!

The city has been named the world’s best bicycle city a couple of times (1993 and 2006). It is a university city which is part of the reason why it has so many people bicycling, but it has done amazing things to make the city more bicycle friendly as well. The bicycle facilities you can see on the following pages will probably blow your mind away.

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Berlin is a great bicycle city! Full of bicyclists, bike art, bicycle infrastructure, and unique bikes for a variety of different purposes, Berlin is #7 on this “great bicycle cities” list.

If you go to Germany, you will probably hear some Germans saying how much they love their cars (i.e. Mercedes, BMW, Audi). However, you will probably be surprised to see how many people actually love their bikes. Berlin is perhaps the best example. You can see people from across the class spectrum using the bicycle for a wide range of purposes. Even the postal service and other delivery services use bicycles.

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Naked bicyclists, folding bikes, balloon bikes, and more — enjoy this bicycle photo tour of Barcelona.

The third B in a row, Barcelona is next on this list of great bicycle cities (right ahead of Basel, Switzerland and Bogota, Columbia). As a dense city with a wonderful climate, Barcelona is naturally a wonderful place for bicyclists. However, a lot has been done to make it more so. The biggest carrot encouraging bicycling, by far, is Barcelona’s relatively new bike sharing program — Bicing. This is perhaps the best or second best bike sharing program in the world. It is one of a new generation of sophisticated, smart bike sharing programs. Read more about it on page 2.

Beyond Bicing, the city is also working on creating new bicycling routes and bike parking and it hosts fun Bike Week celebrations every year in May. Also, it has been creating better infrastructure for bicyclists due to so many more people bicycling within the past few years. It is transforming itself into a truly world-leading bicycle city.

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Bogota is a true testament of how a city can be transformed. Through “radical” action for a better city and clean green transportation, Bogota has become a leader in bicycle transportation.

One step ahead of Basel, Switzerland on this list, Bogota boasts an amazing transformation in the transportation infrastructure and alternative transportation usage of a modern city. Unlike many cities that are renovating primarily for cars or, more admirably, mass-transit, Bogota made sure to put a lot of focus on improving their city for bicyclists and pedestrians as well, the greenest transportation modes!

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, this series of photo tours is going to be worth about a hundred thousand.

You have probably heard before that the cities on this list are great bicycle cities, but the following photo tours will give you a better and more entertaining visual explanation of why they are considered to be so great.

From public art to art on bikes, seas of bicycles to bicycles that could carry a swimming pool, high heels to naked bicyclists, check out these upcoming photo tours of some of the world’s greatest bicycle cities.

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England is working to combine two of the world’s cleanest methods of transportation through a new initiative.

A handful of strongly funded programs are geared to get more people bicycling to and from rail stations in England.

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Portland, Oregon-based businessman Joe Doebele has another complaint about the program: there’s nothing in it to get commuters to shift from four wheels to two. Rather than just throw stones, though, Doeble decided to do something about this shortcoming: he’s started his own “cash for clunkers” program at his cargo bike shop Joe Bike.

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Since moving within blocks of a train station a few years ago, I sort of fell out of the cycling habit. I used to ride bikes all over town, and it’s time to get back onto two wheels and back into shape! The thing about riding bikes, especially during summer in the South, is the heat. There’s no way to get around it: by the time you reach your destination, you’re going to be a little sweaty. Maybe a lot sweaty. Here are some projects to help you beat the heat!

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With all that going for it, why aren’t more folks ditching their cars and pedaling their way around town? There are a ton of excuses, some legit, some not so much. You don’t have to cycle everywhere to make an impact. Even replacing a few car trips a week makes a difference, and you just might find that the more you ride, the more you want to ride. Here are some resources from around the GO network to help get you going!

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Unfortunately, riding bikes means occasionally dealing with pitfalls like bad roads, dangerous intersections, and theft. It would be great if drivers were more bike-aware, but this just isn’t always the case. Seattle-based BikeWise is looking to take some of the unknown out of bike commuting, providing a tool to “make biking safer and more fun by gathering good data on the things that sometimes go wrong.”

So how does it work?

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1. Cycle:
a.motor b.bi c.water

2. Take:
a.more b.a seat c.action

3. Vehicle:
a.SUV b.C-A-R c.B-U-S

4. Media:
a.TV b.radio c.book/mags

5. Bikes:
a.for kids b.for exercise c.for most trips

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Londoners will soon be able to hire bikes in the centre of town for short journeys, under plans announced this week by the mayor, Boris Johnson.

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B Cycle is the marriage of the concept of car sharing, as exemplified by Zipcar and the like, but even more simplified for instant gratification, with an attractive retro futuristic solar powered docking station, coupled with additional information to give greater substance to the experience of using a bike, like how many calories you burned and how much carbon you offset vs. driving your car.

B Cycle has yet to launch, and they’re using the web to do some of their market research for them while encouraging demand and perhaps evangelism by people wanting to get it in their area:

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The police officer who was infamously caught on camera tackling a bicyclist in New York City was fired on February 10th, seven months after the original incident.

As we reported here on Planetsave, former officer Patrick Pogan, 23, has been arraigned under charges of falsifying records. We’ve now learned that he has plead not guilty to the charges in Manhattan court and could face up to 4 years in prison if convicted.

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If you’ve been to Paris in the last year and a half and you didn’t spend your entire visit slugging back Côtes du Rhône and camembert, you might remember having seen a whole lot of bikes. Like, loads and loads of them. Huge, industrial looking, cumbersome, with standard metal baskets? These curious contraptions belong to a new form of transportation known as the Vélib. A combination of “vélo” (bike), and “liberté”, (freedom), the Vélib offers tourists and locals just that: bikes and freedom. 

The Green Way to see Paris

As long as you have a credit card or an ATM card (is anyone still using traveler’s checks these days?) you can rent a bike for a day, a week, even for a year! The way it works is this:  

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UPS has been taking steps to go green for years now, but this Christmas season, they’ve taken their fuel-saving efforts to yet another level. In order to keep up with the holiday mailing demand, they continued a program that they tested out last year - using bikes to deliver packages.

Obviously, this can’t be done everywhere, but in locations with seasonally warm weather, this is an option that is saving 17 gallons of fuel per every three bikers on the road. On top of that, they’re saving money on vehicle maintenance costs and cutting down on emissions.

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One major deterrent for city bicyclists is lack of parking. Some Japanese cities have taken it upon themselves to remedy the problem with the Eco Cycle, a profoundly weird machine that takes your bike and parks it underground for safe-keeping. The Eco Cycle costs 2,600 yen for a monthly ticket. What do you think— would you trust your bike here?

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