Any one ever need any information on Phoenix Arizona or surrounding areas PM. I was car free there for five years. And yes that is one of the best places to ride a bike in the world. Sum it up. Flat, warm, sunny 300+ days, cheap,2 bike coops, bicycle friendly communities (lots of them), Mts and basins outside the limits, good pavement, very few pedestrains, many roads don't have street parking,.25 and .50 mile grids, very few rural roads which allows for decent shoulders on them, and lost of bicycle infastructure.

I am not happy about it took me along time to move away. Not that it is a bad place just too cold. Can't wait to move already.

Will be launching myself in March.

Wait what? You aren't happy about too cold huh? Move away? March?

Phoenix livable?

More pedestrians is better. Don't be bike and weather centric in your thinking. You'll find that putting people before yourself is so much better for the community. Share first and people will share with you. Better your community and your neighbors will embetter you. Yield first and people will yield to you. Fuck'n bleeding heart liberal ideas like that.

Is anyone else confused on whether the OP is moving from or to Phoenix?

I don't know but I want to hear more about a city which is five times the size of Minneapolis that has TWO WHOLE bike co-ops

Yeah. I went to undergrad in Phoenix, and while I wasn't the biker I am now, I always thought it was a pretty miserable place to bike. The speed limit is 40 on pretty much everything except residential streets, and the residential streets are all twisty and development-like. Not impossible to navigate, but you have to plan ahead and not screw up or you're toast (in the summer, literally!). And I can only think of one substantial bike path in the east metro, though that could be an oversight. All that said, though, right now I think I'd take 40-50 mph traffic in warm and sunny over winter+injury in minneapolis in a heartbeat.

charming

I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

ha

Maybe it's the fact that we have 300 sunny days each year. Or maybe it's that the Southwest attracts free spirits. For whatever reason, bikers love this area, and motorcycles here continue to increase in popularity for recreational use.

I was just in Phoenix, and I did some riding on the canal path - it was nice for recreation.

The problem with Phoenix is that it was a city planned and built after the advent of the car - it is build with cars in mind - not walkable/bikeable/public transitable just driveable.

There is a huge recreational bike culture - from what I saw down there - so there is a bike culture - but I don't know if there are as many commuter minded people as we have in the cities. Many people move to phoenix so that they can ride all year round. It is a weird place. All I know is that when the global water crisis starts - Arizona is not the best place to be. Minnesota might actually be the best place to be when that happens - 10K lakes, and a really good national guard.

Thing is, by the time that the water wars are really _really_ going, we're going to have sold off most of the rights. At least, if we follow some of the other states in the region...

Perhaps living the stereotypical American suburban lifestyle in the desert, as well as irrigating the great plains in order to support crops that wouldn't reliably grow there is a bad idea.

Who'd have thunk it?

Oh well, it's not like we really need most of the food that grows in the plains states. Most of it is animal feed anyways, and plant-animal calorie conversion is pretty inefficient (90% lost, IIRC).

So, rising meat prices, and less of a rise in non-meat prices. From a vegan perspective, not the worst thing to happen in the US.

The outdoors culture here is way too strong for me to leave.

I really don't find Twin Cities to be Outdoorsy.

If, at night, you can see an artificial light source, you are not in the Real Outdoors.