BIKING SEVILLE

Today, my oldest son and I rode around Seville on rental bikes. The city operates a bike rental program with easy pick-up and drop-off kiosks throughout the city but, unfortunately, these do not include bikes for children (at least not that we could find), so we had to track down a private rental facility.

Like Barcelona and San Sebastian, we have found Seville to be a great city for biking with children. There are dedicated lanes for bikers throughout the city, and you can get pretty much anywhere you want to safely via bike. The temperature has dropped a bit but it is still scorching hot (the climate here is very similar to Austin's, although less humid and less annual rainfall). Luckily, we continue to find lots of shade here, even on our bike routes. Seville is filled with trees and other shade structures.

Interesting blurb from Wiki about the rapid development of Seville's bike route system:

"The most important factor beside Sevici bikes is that the municipality created more than 120 km of safe bike paths throughout the city and did it fast. Bi-directional green paths follow main avenues. They are continuous (properly connected at crossings), uniform (green surface, 2.5 m wide) and segregated from motorised traffic. Whole network cost 32 million Euros. Measures were based on sustainable mobility plan. Seville proves that development of cycling can be achieved fast."


And a great blog entry from People for Bikes on Seville's commitment to cycling. Apparently Seville's 87-mile network was built in just 3 years (2007-2009), and now 70,000 bike trips are made every day vs 2,500 in 2002.

Biking over the river. See the shade structures ahead.

Dedicated bike lane on major thoroughfare

Most of the bike lanes we rode on were dedicated lanes on the sidewalk.