Sorry... Philadelphia vs Washington DC: Part 3

[saab2000]

The day of reckoning is getting closer. A memo came out today from my company telling us that we will have to choose soon between PHL and DCA (Philly and Washington Reagan National). There will be 1 or 2 more, but those have not yet been announced. If one of them is really cool, then I might bid for it, but right now these are the two on the table.

I have asked this before, but I am going to waste your time again.

I have a preference to work in Washington at DCA. It is a smaller airport and the associated problems will probably be smaller as well.

But I have heard that living (and more importantly, RIDING) is better around Philadelphia.

I spent July-April living in Loudon County, west of Washington Dulles. I was underwhelmed by the cycling. That said, I imagine Maryland is better.

Several people have piped up with the word that Philly has a great cycling community. Is it really ridable? I am very nervous about going there and finding that it is just endless suburbia (like Northern Virginia) and really not ridable.

One urban area with good urban riding is Minneapolis. If anyone can compare Philly with Minneapolis I would love to hear it.

Has anyone here got experience in both places and can compare them?

Also, for those of you in Washington, how is it in Maryland, north of the district? Is it easy to get to decent riding?

I have heard some testamonials regarding Philly, and those were generally positive. I will have to come out soon and check it out personally.

This is a pretty big decision. I lean towards making it based on the riding, since my salary is the same regardless of where I end up.

Thanks for your patience to all those who have seen this before. I would love to hear more. Soon I have to decide.

[H.Frank Beshear]

Before you head off for the east we need to have a ride and maybe a :beer: . Take care Frank

[saab2000]

Frank,

Me heading east means nothing..... In my job I can go anywhere anytime. It just means that I will have an apartment there. But home is still going to be not far from where you are.

I would love to come to the Quad Cities for some riding. Believe me.

[Too Tall]

Dood, you don't call me. I'd GLADLY take you for some rides and show you the local training rides and training areas. Krikey what's the issue? I still love this area BECAUSE it has all that a rich city environment has to offer with the benefit of so many DC only activities eg. concerts, museums, cultural events and above all DIVERSITY...that's important for me.

There are so many race teams, shop rides and regular weekday / weekend training rides that are reliable and all levels it ain't even funny.

I've ridden all over the USA and VA / MD have the most rural paved roads I've ever seen.

I've lived in Quad Cities...totally dig the arts scene and people however the roads are not abundant and you are stuck training indoors for 7 months and it's flat compared to here. Philly is awesome baby, it has alot however I'd pick this area for weather alone....we have it alllll over Philly.

End of story.

[flydhest]

saab,

for better or worse, in the DC area are the likes of TooTall, Smiley, Sandy (and therefore, intermittantly, Kevan), Oldmill, RapidTourist, zap, Spectrum Bob, and a host of others from the forum.

The riding is good but not stupendous. Depending on where you lived in the Philly area, you could get some truly wonderful riding in (I'm thinking west of the city in Pennsylvania). Riding in MD is nice, but the roads aren't perfect and the sprawl is increasing. That said, it is still good riding and lots and lots and lots of people to ride with. The local team/club rides often have 50 to 100 people.

[Ray]

In Philly, it depends on WHERE. In the city is good for commuting, but not great for rec riding. To the east, in south Jersey, it's flat as a pancake. To the south, it's very suburban and then you're in Wilmington. To the north and west, the close in suburbs aren't great, but you escape them pretty quickly and there's a LOT of rural / exurban area where the riding is really wonderful. Great mix of more hills and less hills, beautiful scenery, very light traffic once you get off the main arteries, etc with a little bit of flat thrown in. The downside is that the roads with the least traffic tend not to be the best paved roads in the world. Not too bad though - I ride with 700x23s most of the time and am fine and occasionally take the 25s if I know I'm gonna hit a lot of the worst roads.

My riding in DC is basically limted to Smiley's ride a couple of weeks ago. I don't want to offend my very wonderful hosts - the ride was a lot of fun and there's a great community of folks from this board and closely related in the area. That alone is worth a lot. We only saw a very small part of the area on that ride and I'm sure there's a lot of better riding than what we saw. BUT... the types of roads and the amount of traffic that we hit that day was just WAAAAAAY more than I ever have to deal with up here. Until you get well out from the city, there appears to be a lot more development and a lot more traffic. Even on the prettiest and most remote country roads we found, there was a lot more traffic than I'm used to. The condition of the closer in roads was also, to my surprise, even worse than around here. Our roads are pretty coarsely paved, so it's rarely a magic carpet ride, but the paving tends to be pretty consistent. The roads around DC were more smoothly paved but just littered with potholes. I found that a lot more stressful, particularly combined with all of that traffic, which makes dodging the holes that much more dangerous.

OK, that's all I've got. I realize I saw only a small fraction of what the DC area has to offer, so I can't pass judgement on the whole area. But the Philly area has some truely wonderful riding and also a great cycling community, although not nearly as much activity on this forum.

In terms of weather, DC probably loses fewer days to weather in the winter, but it's that much more hot and humid in the summer. Probably not a huge factor. And as much as I like Philly as a city, it's pretty provincial around here - DC is, for obvious reasons, much more wordly and, in some ways, sophisticated. But Philly's got plenty of good city stuff too, so I wouldn't mark it down too far in that regard.

Good luck with a tough decision.

-Ray

[flydhest]

I think Ray summarized it pretty well. We were chatting about this topic when he was down for the ride. I like to think we have great cycling, but then reality hits. I think it's good, but not great.

Saab, if you usually ride alone, Philly, as much as I hate to admit it, probably wins if you can live in the right place. I don't know how much of a commute you're willing to take. In DC, where we do most of our riding (northwest DC and north and west of the District) there's a fairly easy commute to National down the George Washington Parkway. Timing, of course, varies the traffic a lot.

Maybe Ray can chime in on getting from the good riding areas near Philly to the Airport.

[Spectrum Bob]

Another think to consider is that National has a metro stop with a short indoor walk from the platform into the terminal. I am an easy walk to a metro stop and I love flying in and out of National and not having to drive.

[cookieguy]

I lived in the Philly 'burbs for 10 years. A substantial portion of Chester county has great riding. For getting to the airport, southern Chester county should work well and has fabulous cycling opportunities.

[Ray]

I lived in the Philly 'burbs for 10 years. A substantial portion of Chester county has great riding. For getting to the airport, southern Chester county should work well and has fabulous cycling opportunities.
Yeah, as Cookie Guy says, there are plenty of locations in southern Delaware County and southern Chester County that are a relatively quick shot to the airport - 20 minutes to half an hour depending on traffic. My town is more like 35-40 minutes to the airport. The only real good rail service to the airport is from center city. From Montgomery or Bucks Counties (also very good cycling), that commute would be pretty oppressive.

Of course, if you have your own helicopter... :rolleyes:

-Ray

[JasonF]

I went to undergrad in D.C. (and paid my tuition as a bike messenger in the late-80's) and lived in Fairfax, VA for a couple of years. I now live in Princeton, NJ - 45 minutes north of Philly.

D.C. has a tremendous amount of sprawl which means you'll really have to go north or west to get some country riding in.

Philly's northern suburbs (e.g. extreme northern Bucks county) is trying to restrict overbuilding. It's there (New Hope area) where you'll find some very nice riding. Still, it's about an hour north of the city.

I wish I could give you a definitive answer, but like so many cities in the Northeast, sprawl is the order of the day.

[flydhest]

Jason,

Do you live in P'ton? I lived there for 5 years. We would do lots of rides out to New Hope/Lambertville. That is some good riding, no? Zion Road was a favorite for riding out to and getting in a good climb. Copper Mine Road (just off Canal Road) was a favorite for hill repeats.

[97CSI]

To repeat myself, there is a ton good riding around Philadelphia. Start in Center City at the Art Museum or in just about any of surrounding burbs. Lots of clubs, rides, etc. Come on in for the U.S. Pro Championship on Sunday and join us (about 500,000 are forecast to attend). Look for me (on the sidelines, of course). I'll be the one with the Sapphire Blue CdA and Hotter N Hell jersey.

[saab2000]

Guys,

Thanks for all the answers. Many of these I have heard before and some are new.

The things which make a city nice are, to be perfectly blunt, not that important to me. I don't go to the theater, or art museums, or concerts, etc. That is not to say I don't appreciate them, but my spare time is generally spent cycling.

My dilemma is that I would prefer to work at Washington National. It is accessible by the Metro and is also a vastly superior airport to Washington Dulles. What happens at work and where I work is important to me. My job and position is unique in that I have some control over where I get to work.

The bottom line is that I am looking for a place with good riding where I can tolerate the airport. In like being able to get into rural areas with relatively quiet roads where people are not driving like Michael Schumacher.

Those who have experience in both places seem to think that Philadelphia has a slight edge.

One thing I like in DC is the Haynes Point training ride at noon every day. That by itself practically makes it all worthwhile! It is a really high quality ride. Short, but intense. I have done it a number of times and invariably have had a good workout.

Bottom line: still undecided......... :crap:

[JasonF]

Jason,

Do you live in P'ton? I lived there for 5 years. We would do lots of rides out to New Hope/Lambertville. That is some good riding, no? Zion Road was a favorite for riding out to and getting in a good climb. Copper Mine Road (just off Canal Road) was a favorite for hill repeats.

Yes, I live just off Cold Soil Road on the Lawrenceville side of the Princeton border and there is great riding around here. I'm originally from Connecticut and this area defies (for the most part) the typical New Jersey stereotypes. I'm still recovering from a bad run-in with a truck whiile riding a few years ago, and I limit myself to the D&R canal on my Concours 'cross until I screw up my courage to ride on the roads again...

[97CSI]

Yes, I live just off Cold Soil Road on the Lawrenceville side of the Princeton border and there is great riding around here. I'm originally from Connecticut and this area defies (for the most part) the typical New Jersey stereotypes. I'm still recovering from a bad run-in with a truck whiile riding a few years ago, and I limit myself to the D&R canal on my Concours 'cross until I screw up my courage to ride on the roads again...Sorry to hear that. Check-in with Knapp's :banana: , your Serotta LBS in Lawrenceville. I drive up from below AC to deal with Pete. He can hook you up with some of the locals, including his wife, to get you back out on the road. Great riding around there (I moved down from Lambertville, at my wife's direction I might add, to be at the shore).