Bicycling magazing names Cleveland one of top five up-and-coming cycling cities

Bicycling magazine names Cleveland as one of the top 50 cycling cities in the USA, and one of the top five up-and-coming communities:.

By David Howard

Apparently there have been a few Cleveland jokes told over the years: mostly lame jabs about inept sports teams or Rust Belt dreariness. We don't know about any of that. But we do know the city is dead serious about bikes, from Cannondale devotee LeBron James down to the devout commuters at the Cleveland Clinic.

What's to love? For starters, the stretch of bike lane that now runs the length of historic Euclid Avenue, linking the city's two employment hubs. A new towpath just beyond Cleveland's southern border reaches Akron—80 miles away. Plans call for webs of bike paths to unspool east and west as well. To lure tourists in, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance launched a bike-rental program last summer—it will expand this year into a parking garage with showers and lockers.

And then there's the diversity. In January, a nonprofit unveiled plans to build an indoor velodrome—the third of its kind in the country and the only one east of the Rockies. The city is home to the vast Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park and Pedal Republic, which organizes bike-polo tourneys, tall-bike rides and alley cat races..