I've recently joined the Sustainable Cities Collective, and today there are a couple of good articles on cities and cyclists:

• http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/nextamcity/25116/real-reason...
• http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/dirt/25085/how-design-bicycl...

The first post is more philosophical about how bikes get you to actually _experience_ your city on a human scale, the 2nd much more practical and about Washington D.C. (somewhat successful) efforts to build infrastructure and promote cycling in a city originally not well set out for such.

A nice juicy quote from the 2nd article:

New dedicated bicycle lanes that are somewhat separated and protected from car traffic have dramatically increased ridership by 18-20 percent and brought many new types of riders on the road. “There are now riders heading to metro stops and more women, older folks.”

They seem to have a BISA-like organisation helping push things along too, the phonetically-pleasing WABA (Washington Area Bicyclists Association). Kinda nice for a US city other than Portland to get positive press about this sort of thing ;)