There seem to be more local bike sites in the mountain bike world. I just found several of those, but there aren’t as many general cycling/bike commuter forums.
MPLSBikeLove.com (Minneapolis/St. Paul) has a long-running bike forum. It runs back at least to 2006. http://mplsbikelove.com/forum/
But for some reason, they announced that they are going to integrate Facebook connections while retaining their forum. The announcement says that “Forums are dying.” Not sure if I agree with that. Facebook is useful, but it works differently than forums do. http://mplsbikelove.com/news/mpls-bike-love-is-about-to-be-reborn/
There is also Portland Bike Forums: http://bikeportland.org/forum/index.php? (Yes, I checked the usual bike city suspects first.) It also goes back to at least 2006. But it doesn’t seem to be quite as active as our forum. The population of Portland is fairly close to that of D.C. but the Arlington/DC metropolitan area is much bigger than that of Portland.
There could be other local bike forums. I found the Two Spoke forum, which includes many local sub-forums, including this one for NYC: http://www.twospoke.com/forum/. There is a local DC forum but it only has two threads and no new posts since 2011. I’m not really finding any popular NYC-specific bike forums.
National sites like mtbr.com and bikeforums.net have regional sub-forums but they don’t get as detailed as this forum does.
http://forums.mtbr.com/forum.php
http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php/176-Regional-Discussions
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I agree that bikearlingtonforum.com is great. It wasn’t that long ago when the fancy new method of posting updates on local trail conditions was a poorly advertised Twitter account. There are local bike groups and various smaller forums, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. But BA Forum/Washington Area Bike Forum provides an easy-to-find location for all local bike chat. We are indeed lucky to have it.
On a semi-related note, I wish there were a similar Arlington/DC forum for running. There are many groups in the area with Facebook pages, web sites and active Twitter feeds. But nothing like BA Forum for runners. There are national running forums with occasional local coverage, but that’s not the same thing as a true local forum. Maybe there could be a new sub-forum here for runners/pedestrians. While it’s not quite on-topic, some of the needs and concerns of runners do match up with those of cyclists: safety on local roads and trails for non-motorized users, multimodal paths and trails. And many cyclists are also runners. Sometimes cyclists walk around the region too. Perhaps the new sub-forum could bring over some of the dedicated runners and convince them to pick up cycling, for exercise, recreation and/or commuting. Just a thought.
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