Minneapolis was very lucky: they inherited a large number of extremely high quality freight rail right-of-ways as the industry moved out of the city center. These are perfect for conversion in to bike paths: few hills, and routed to minimize grade crossings (and hence traffic lights). I wish they were everywhere, but building bike routes of this quality in other cities will be much harder.

Denmark seems to have built the "superhighway" from scratch, which is pretty cool. It also seems to have only cost $1.5 million. Since the average freeway costs about $1 million per mile, WHY DON'T WE HAVE MORE BIKEWAYS!?

sorry, lost my composure there.

This will be awesome if it's ever completed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Greenway

The East Coast Greenway, or ECG, is a project to create a nearly 3,000-mile (4,800 km) urban path linking the major cities of the Atlantic coast of the United States, from Calais, Maine, to Key West, Florida, for non-motorized human transportation.

I can attest that the part near Raleigh, NC is very nice.

A freeway costs $1M/mi in the middle of nowhere it costs $30-50M/mi in an urban area and $5-6Bn/mi in Boston!

So we're probably better off waiting for a 1/4 mile highway contract than trying to build the next Instagram.

DC/MD/VA have a lot of verrry long bike trails, and it makes a good deal of sense to use them instead of fighting the beltway traffic, if you live a certain distance away and have showers at work. But if you don't have showers at work, what do you do once you get there? Spray on deodorant and feel gross for the rest of the day?

"But if you don't have showers at work, what do you do once you get there?"

I don't live there, but my solution in a similar situation revolved around the exercise club two blocks from work. On bike days you only use the club for its shower, on non-bike days (winter, etc) you exercise at the club (lift weights, mostly).

Also, hard as it might be to believe, bicycling more energy efficient than walking at the same speed, so once you're in shape, going slow and enjoying the ride is not sweaty, its possible to go slightly faster than walking while generating less heat than a normal walk. Depending on your local weather, a leisurely walk outdoors often results in no sweating at all.

Summer weather in the DC area is such that many days you can soak through your clothing sitting on a park bench in the shade.

I don't have an overly long commute, but enough to make me fairly sweaty. There is no shower at my work, but one of the restrooms is a single with a lockable door. I always bring a towel and a change of clothes and give myself a light spit bath in key areas with wet paper towels and towel dry everywhere before putting on deodorant.

It's not as good as a shower, but I don't smell and I don't feel sticky after. I also feel great and refreshed and not in need of a cup of coffee to wake me up.

Pace yourself. It's pretty hard to do, but it is possible. On a hot day, all bets are off though.

I found that it's much easier to pace myself on my new extremely unsporty bike (basically an Omafiets). You sit upright, and it feels more like joyride than the urban rally it was before.

I grew up there, and before I got my driver's license, I biked everywhere. It was less than a 5 minute ride to the W&OD, which is a long, bike trail. It even hooks up with another trail (don't remember the name) that went to Ballston, so I could visit a friend I had that lived there. It was a 30 mile ride, with a total of about 1 mile not on a paved, well maintained bike trail.

I was in HS, so my solution for the shower thing was:

1) Gym showers at school (duh)

2) Anywhere else, I usually had a friend within a mile of it, since so much is mixed zoning, that would let me use their shower.

Cycle at a normal pace? When walking you can run or you can walk. The same applies to cycling. Everybody in the netherlands does this, and the same probably applies to denmark.

The weather here's been in the 90's (fahrenheit) for the past month or two. It's hard not to sweat.

It's fine if you wear wicking clothing. Riding means air is passing past you fairly quickly and you stay pretty dry. Sweat only hangs around and starts to smell if you're wearing something unsuitable like cotton.

Or if the relative humidity is much over 80%, like it is almost daily in the summers in this region.

Portland doesn't have the luxury of decommissioned railways, so uses some different methods that I think accomplish the same thing. Many of the side streets around here have been converted to "neighborhood greenways" (they used to be called "bike boulevards" but I agree that that didn't really suggest shared use). All you do is make it inconvenient for cars to drive at high speeds by installing mild speed bumps, turn-only intersections, etc, and remove as many stop signs in the greenway direction as you can. Doing this turns these roads effectively into local-access-only routes for cars and there's very little traffic. My bike "path" to and from work is about 8 miles of 35'-wide, paved road. It's very safe too, since you're not in the "door zone" of parked cars in a bike lane and also not so separated from traffic that you are a surprise at intersections like some new bike lanes that are located on the other side of parked cars. Not to mention the low cost.