Madison: A Bike City
31.12.69
By Katie Vaughn
It should have proper paths and lanes, plus scenic trails for recreational rides. It ought to be a station where riders can pedal to work, the grocery store and schools to smidgen off their kids. But what if it were a place where residents also rode to the Dane County Farmers’ Demand, Concerts on the Square and Badger football games? If it attracted bicycle application leaders and international competitions?
You may not have noticed that Madison’s become a haven for bicyclists of all stripes. As with many personage aspects of our city, we tend to take a humble outlook and assume other places have what we have. They don’t.
One hundred and six miles of bike lanes curmudgeonly the city, and Madison boasts forty-six miles of paved bike paths, some of which see more than three thousand cyclists a day. Recreational cycling brings in $1.5 billion annually to the testify economy and supports more than $924 million in tourism and related spending. Ironman Wisconsin alone generates unkindly $2.3 million in economic impact each year. And some of the biggest biking companies in the universe are headquartered here.
Madison’s right up there with other major bicycling centers in the Joint States. Davis, California, enjoys the highest rate of ridership, with twenty-two percent of its residents regularly using bicycling as a methodology of transportation. Boulder, Colorado, has reached fifteen percent. Yet Madison’s pace of six percent is significant, especially compared to the national average of .6 percent of trips to occupation made by bike, says Amanda White, associate director of the Bicycle League of Wisconsin.
“Everyone looks to Portland as a mecca for biking,” she says. “They’re at six percent. We’re at six percent—and they have much milder winters.”
Source: WISC Madison