Road Bicycling Opportunities

[oldnassau]

I'm looking for a retirement community that offers many nearby road bicycling opportunities - rail2trail, dedicated bike trails (paved or dirt), scenic roads with little traffic. Any suggestions??

[classof70]

Great question to ask before you settle down. I saw that Topretirements had a short article on bike-friendly retirements http://www.topretirements.com/blog/baby-boomer-issues/your-next-real-estate-tour-on-a-bike.html/ not too long ago. The towns mentioned there were Ventnor NJ and Northampton, Mass. I also know that a log of towns in the west, particularly Colorado (Fort Collins, in particular) have set up tremendous networks of publicly accessible bike paths. In the east look for places with rails-to-trails programs - Connecticut east of New Haven, Cape Cod, and others. http://www.railstotrails.us/

There is also a book I recommend - "Best 10 Outdoor Towns"

Good luck!

[admin]

In case you you did not get the Jan 7, 2009 Topretirements newsletter, we wrote a feature article on this topic: "15 Great Towns for Biking in Retirement". http://www.topretirements.com/tips/Best_Communities/15_Great_Biking_Towns_for_Retirement.html
If you are interested in biking at all, you will probably enjoy it. The only thing we regret is that by stopping at 15 towns, most of which are pretty good, we had to ignore the hundreds of other towns, mostly small ones, where good biking is a way of life.[/url]

[junebug]

This biking boom seems to be getting some traction. The Miami Herald had a nice article on Jan 10, 2009 about what Miami, which had the dubious award of being named one of America's worst cities for biking by Bicycling Magazine, is doing to make that city more bike-friendly. Some of the things that Miami and other cities are doing are adding bike lanes, requiring bike racks at public faciliities, having car-free days on certain roads, and encoraging showers and lockers for bike commuters.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/front-page/story/846341.html