Americans learn bikes cut costs and improve fitness

By Jon Hurdle

WASHINGTON (Reuters Life!) - At a time of soaring gasoline prices, expanding waistlines, and growing worry over climate change, more Americans are getting on their bikes.

American cities including Portland, Oregon, Louisville, Kentucky, and Washington, D.C. are aggressively promoting bicycling as a clean, efficient and healthy means of transport, and many of their citizens are taking to two wheels for short urban journeys.

"The public is getting the message and they want to do it" said Andy Clarke, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists, the leading U.S. advocacy group for bikes as a means of transportation.

"There is a palpable increase in the number of people cycling," he added in an interview at the National Bike Summit.

About 500 people including bike enthusiasts and industry and government officials attended the summit sponsored by the bicycling lobby. They attended workshops, training and meetings to promote policies to get more people riding bikes.

Bicycle advocates say the bike should be used for the 40 percent of urban journeys that are less than two miles (3.2 km), especially since 90 percent of those journeys are done by car.

Between 1991 and 2007, the number of daily riders in Portland jumped to 15,000 from 2,500. The city has recorded double-digit growth in the last three years, said Roger Geller, the city's bicycle coordinator, at the summit.

In Washington, D.C., there has been a 50 percent growth in bike use since 2000, according to Emeka Monomee, director of the city's transportation department.