Best Cities to Ride a Bike

Wish to show off your new Honda on the highway? Hang on. Biking is in fashion across the globe now. More and more people are giving up on their cars and biking to work on a daily basis.

The advantages? Well, there is more than one.

Biking is a great way to get to know a city and get fit at the same time. You do not add to the ever increasing air pollution, on the contrary to help to achieve a greener city. Besides, the last-mile connectivity comes the easiest with biking. What tops the list is that it is so much easier on your pocket than the gas bills your car gives you.

The world is catching up and catching up fast. There are numerous amazing cities across the globe today that encourages biking and promotes the trend actively.

Here's a list of some of cities that boast of a well organized biking system. These biking paradises showcase the whole trend as a fashionable, intelligent move so that more and more people opt for it.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Undoubtedly, Amsterdam has been ranked the most bike-friendly city in the world. Reports by virgin-vacations say nearly 40 percent of all commutes that take place in Amsterdam are done by bicycle. Amsterdam hosts the famous Amsterdam Bike Ramp at Central Station which has the capacity of some 7,000 bikes for commuters to park while they travel by train. Designated street lanes and traffic signals, bicycle safety concerns, rented bicycles, underground sheds and outside shelters to park bikes are the highlights.

Portland, Oregon

Portland has done it differently. It has created bicycle paths that connect the urban neighborhoods, so a rider can bypass auto commuting altogether. The city offers low-cost commuter bicycles to the city's less wealthy residents. These bikes come complete with a helmet, lock, pump, maps, and rain gear. virgin-vacations reported that, bicycle use grown four times over the last 20 years without any increase in crashes. However the city still has 38 miles of bike lanes left in order to achieve its master plan.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Named as one of Forbes "Top Ten Places to Live in Europe," Copenhagen is also home to the world's most successful community bicycle program. In Denmark practically everybody has a bike. The place is better known as the City of Bikes. Currently 32 percent of workers bicycle to work. The city's bicycle paths are often separated from the main traffic lanes and sometimes have their own signal systems. In most places, cars are charged $5 per hour to park, so having a bike is a great money-saver. The city provides public rented bicycles throughout the downtown area and used with a returnable deposit of 20 kroner, virgin-vacations reported.

Curitiba, Brazil

Curitiba is one of the well-planned cities in the world, and bicycle integration is at its core. The city has been pushing cycling as the preferred mode of transportation for more than 40 years now and the result has been a huge number of bike lanes. In addition to the infrastructure, a vibrant bike-oriented activist community has been developed that promotes bicycle riding as an alternative to cars and buses, reported AskMen.

Barcelona, Spain

In 2007 Barcelona's City Council started the biking service as a means of public transport. Once a citizen gets his card issued, he can take a bicycle from any of the 100 stations spread around the city and use it anywhere the urban area of the city, and then leave it at any another station. There are currently 3,250 parking spaces for bikes at street level. There is plan to further construct a new underground car park for bicycles. Designated street lanes, independent bike paths, traffic signals and bike maps are some of the features offered to the citizens. Berlin, San Francisco, Davis, Montreal, Basel and Beijing are some the other cities across the globe that are winners in this list of biking paradises, virgin-vacations mentioned in an article.