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I currently live out West in a town of 125,000 people. It is a very bike-friendly town. I can take bike paths or bike lanes in the street to everything; grocery stores, movie theatres, the fitness center, library, etc.. People here are very aware and accommodating of bike traffic. Would you say Asheville is a bike friendly town? Thanks!
Don't really know. We have a place west of Asheville, in Waynesville, and there is a pretty strong cycling community there. There is a great bike shop in Asheville named Liberty Bikes. Look them up and ask.
I currently live out West in a town of 125,000 people. It is a very bike-friendly town. I can take bike paths or bike lanes in the street to everything; grocery stores, movie theatres, the fitness center, library, etc.. People here are very aware and accommodating of bike traffic. Would you say Asheville is a bike friendly town? Thanks!
I live in Brevard, and since we have a big biking community, I would say Asheville does as well.....matter of fact, most of WNC is a big biking community. As far as being bike friendly, as long as you arent one of those type of cyclists who think they own the road and think that they dont have to abide by the traffic laws, you should be fine.
I'd have to agree with AngryCandy. There are certainly lots of bike enthusiasts, but there are not bike lanes (or even sidewalks in many areas), and drivers are not what I'd call accommodating. This is a fantastic area for mountain biking on trails, but street biking isn't a great way to get around town.
I currently live out West in a town of 125,000 people. It is a very bike-friendly town. I can take bike paths or bike lanes in the street to everything; grocery stores, movie theatres, the fitness center, library, etc.. People here are very aware and accommodating of bike traffic. Would you say Asheville is a bike friendly town? Thanks!
Asheville's drivers are OK around bikers but the road infrastructure is absolutely awful awful awful. There are some bike lanes but they start and end randomly so for the most part you will be riding in the car lanes. This is made worse because the city is pretty darn hilly so even if you have a cassette with a large range you will be slowing other people down with no safe way to get out of the way. Purpose built racks are fairly rare unless something has been renovated recently. On the plus side there is not really a problem with theft that I've heard of.
Here's a google maps link with the bike overlay on. It is every single bit as bad as it looks. I tried to stay into road and utility biking when I moved but ended up selling my bike to a friend in upstate SC because it was just too much of a pain to get around here.
Would you live in the Asheville city limits, or just in the general area? Makes a difference. We looked in a number of places in the area, including gated communities, and saw very few places with bike lanes, though did see a lot of bikers.
Keep in mind Asheville is pretty hilly, so biking wherever you are now, if it's relatively flat, you will not like biking in Asheville. Altho there's a Blue Ridge Parkway race that winds up in downtown Asheville, and I DO NOT know how they do it. It can get kind of wild in a car along the edges. I used to bike everywhere when I lived in the eastern part of North Carolina, which all of the coastal East is flat, and this was before bike lanes and such, and I never had a problem. But Asheville is way behind when it comes to improving itself in SO MANY ways. Nevertheless, this is a cool town, much more interesting than a lot of mid-sized cities, I used to live in Historic Montford, and I worked downtown, so it was a straight shot just about, loved really breezing it after midnight, hogging the whole avenue with the old trees thru there, downhill from town part of the way. Oh, there are bike lanes in various locales, share the road signs, and a plan to get it all straight, but lots left to do. I hear Charlottesville VA has good biking stuff going on, but I haven't checked on their maps or anything. And then anywhere it's flat and fairly small with a university in the middle of the town, you should be good.
I love biking in the asheville and surrounding areas. It's not absolutely set up for it in every area, but I find it no more difficult than most other places (i.e. Maryland where I previously live a while back!)...
The hills of course are a challenge but that's a good part for me!
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Biking enthusiast
