If you ever watched the (now canned) Philadelphia International Cycling Championship and wished you could take a spin on the course, you’re in luck: the Parx Casino Philly Cycling Classic—the new race that replaced the Cycling Championship this year—is partnering up with Bicycling magazine to open its course early for amateur cyclists.

The so-named Bicycling Open, which will take place on June 2nd before the pro race, will allow recreational cyclists to complete as many laps as possible between 7:15 and 8:30 a.m. on the new 12-mile Parx Cycling Classic course. And get this: They’re even doing chip timing so you’ll have something to brag about afterwards.

The course is mainly concentrated in Fairmount, East Falls and Manayunk, and, of course, includes a climb up the infamous Manayunk Wall. Participants will get a swag bag, post-ride breakfast and meet-and-greet opportunity with athletes from the Cadence Cycling Foundation. Basic entry is $25, but $80 gets you a commemorative jersey, and $100 gets you entry to the CCFan Zone, located at the finish line of the pro race. Register here.

How pretty! You can play with this interactive heat map over at walkscore.com.

Bike Score updated its Most Bikeable Cities ranking this week, pegging Philly in the #4 slot, behind Portland, San Francisco and Denver. Overall, we clocked a 68 out of 100 Bike Score, a figure that measures whether a city is good for biking by looking at bike lanes, hilliness, how easy it is to get from here to there, and the number of people who commute by bike.

Our respectable 68 puts us in the upper edge of the “bikeable” category, meaning we have a decent amount of bike infrastructure that makes our city relatively easy to get around on two wheels. A score of between 70 and 89 would have made us “very bikeable,” according to these metrics, while 90 to 100 would have made us a veritable “biker’s paradise.” Hey, it’s something to strive for.

The Top 10 list only looks at cities with populations of 500,000 or more, to make apples-to-apples comparisons. Rounding out the list are Boston (#5), Washington, D.C. (#6), Seattle (#7), Tucson (#8), New York (#9), and Chicago (#10).

While the presence of a bike share program doesn’t directly earn you extra Bike Score points, the debut of Philly’s program next year should only help. More cyclists on the road could improve our bike-commiting score, which, I’m thinking, could tick us up a few points.

See Also
10 Pimped-Out Bike Accessories for National Bike to Work Week
Cycling in the City: A Newbie’s Guide to Biking Safely in Philly

If you wandered by Rittenhouse Square yesterday afternoon, you may have noticed a tent with a bunch of shiny bikes parked nearby. And if you timed it juuuust right, you may have even seen Mayor Michael Nutter there. He was at 18th and Walnut with reps from bike-share programs in DC, Boston and Denver to drum up support and interest for Philly’s in-the-works bike share program. And it looks like all systems are go: The mayor has already earmarked $3 million in bike-share seed money from the capital budget—with more on the way, he hopes, from state, federal and private sources to help get it off the ground.

The Boston, DC and Denver reps weren’t just props at the demo tent. Last night, they gathered at the Academy of Natural Sciences, along with our own Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities Rina Cutler and Andrew Stober of the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities, for a panel discussion on how to get a successful bike-share program off the ground. After each city rep gave a 10-minute presentation on their programs, Stober briefly outlined a plan for Philly’s system. Here are the highlights:
READ MORE