Provincetown perfect for bicycling; national cycling organizations agree
PROVINCETOWN — Robb Beaton picked up a framed black-and-white photo of the original Arnold’s Bike Shop, circa 1937, illustrating just how long Provincetown has had a love affair with biking.
“Where is there another bike trail that goes eight miles through the sand dunes?” he said.
Beaton bought Arnold’s from his grandfather in 1998, and has kept it running for 25 years, making it the oldest bike shop in town.
Provincetown is perfect for bicycling, he said.
“It’s just a beautiful area, it’s compact, you can have a busy main street and then literally a quarter-mile away, you’re away from everything, just nature — the bike path, the nature walk.”
Most bikeable city in US
Beaton’s observations as a small-business owner are on par with the experiences of town officials, tourists and other businesses — and, most recently, the organization PeopleForBikes, which ranked Provincetown as the number one most bikeable city in the United States.
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PeopleForBikes and Trek Bicycle, two bicycle-centric organizations, ranked 1,058 US communities for biking. This is the sixth consecutive year rankings have been published. In the top three with Provincetown are Davis, California and Fayette, Missouri. Out of 1,105 cities, Provincetown has a number one overall city ranking. Out of 565 small cities, Provincetown also ranks number one.
PeopleForBikes ranks municipalities using a “Community Score” based on awareness, network, ridership and safety. Provincetown’s community score landed at 53 in 2022, compared to the average community score of 24 for all communities in 2022.
In a video done with PeopleForBikes, Rik Ahlberg, chair of the Provincetown Bicycle Committee, spoke to the growth Provincetown has already experienced over time since the committee was formed.
The committee was originally formed to educate the community after a cyclist was killed, Ahlberg said. It has since become integral to planning in the region. While 70 percent of Provincetown is Cape Cod National Seashore, the road right on the waterfront is about three miles long and has morphed into a unique experience for visitors — a road serving as a one-way for cars and a two-way for bicycles and pedestrians.
“We made a big push when I joined the Bicycle Committee to make sure that there are bike racks at all of the municipal buildings — so town hall, the library, anywhere you go,” Ahlberg said.
Adding additional things like visible crosswalks and bike signage has also improved the safety for cyclists.
“Provincetown is a unique place for biking, bikes are almost essential here. It’s too big to walk around everywhere, to the beach and so forth, but parking and cars are terrible. So people ride bikes all the time, it’s kind of a way of life here,” said Bill Meadows, owner of Ptown Bikes.
Bikes a transportation choice for residents
The first two years Meadows lived in Provincetown, he didn’t own a car because he biked everywhere. His shop has now been in operation for 28 years.
“People see it as a necessity here but they love to bike also. It’s part of the culture, it’s not just recreational,” Meadows said.
To further underscore that point, Meadows said Ptown Bikes even provides bikes free of charge to all filmmakers at the Provincetown Film Festival each year. Many locals, he continued, don’t have cars at all.
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Even visitors and vacationers take advantage of Provincetown’s prominent biking culture. Visitors from as far away as North Carolina and California spent their days biking up and down Commercial Street on Wednesday, among the two-way pedestrian and one-way vehicle traffic.
Keith Sweeney and Don Aigler from Charlotte, North Carolina, first-time visitors, have found the bicycle scene significantly better than their hometown.
“We rode all the way out to the beaches. We ride down to the store. We ride down to the bar, we go have a drink. It’s been the best way to get anywhere because it’s so detoxifying,” Sweeney said.
“The ease and accessibility for us to get bikes, have them delivered, be of quality and able to just go, there’s so much stress relief in that alone,” he said.
Biking ease brings return visitors
Visitors also choose to return to Provincetown to experience the biking and walking culture they enjoy.
Brigham Pierce from San Diego, California has been to Provincetown three times and each time rents a bicycle because of how simple the main thoroughfares, main bike path and bike lanes are. Commercial Street’s flatness make it ideal for biking, he said. He greatly enjoys just going out onto the nearby paths even into Truro because it’s just nature and bicyclists for so many miles.
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Commercial Street is a very different biking experience than biking the rest of the area, but said as long as everyone goes slowly, biking there feels “pretty safe.”
Provincetown's Director of Tourism Tony Fuccillo said the way so many forms of transportation work together is one of the things that makes Provincetown so unique.
“The town is about three miles long and about a quarter mile wide,” he said. “We’re a very, very small town and we’re long and narrow, and (biking is still) the most popular mode of transportation.”
To maintain that lifestyle, Fuccillo said the town will continue to add and maintain bike racks and repair stations.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Provincetown most named most bikeable city in US
