This App Shows Biking Is Quicker Than You Think

Bike Citizens is a mobile and web app designed both to help out urban biking enthusiasts and to encourage those intimidated by biking in the big city to give it a shot. The app provides bike routes, tracks distance and speed, and comes with a list of themed bike tours (architecture, shopping, arts, and so forth). But its most interesting feature might be more symbolic than practical: Click on any point on the map, and Bike Citizens will tell you how far you can travel in a given amount of time (in increments from five to 30 minutes).

"We wanted to prove that one should never underestimate the possibilities the bike offers," Johanna Kolb, project manager for Bike Citizens told Fast Company. "Waiting for public transport or searching for a vacant parking lot can take a lot longer than five minutes. So we also wanted to show that in this time you could already cover a considerable distance by bike." 

For instance, in five minutes, you can cover 2.6 miles in Las Vegas. Fifteen minutes will take you from New York City’s Lower East Side to several neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including Murray Hill, Greenpoint, and Gowanus. And, if you’re speedy, a full thirty minutes will connect you to most of San Francisco. Just click on a point in your city of choice and watch as possible routes spread out across the map. It’s a simple but impressive visualization of the amount of ground you can cover on a bicycle in major cities across the world.

The app is available in the App Store and Google Play, and there’s also a limited version available online. 

[h/t: Fast Company]