We entered Ride the City in a contest called Pittsburgh Innovates last week. The contest pits technologies with some kind of Pittsburgh roots against one another.

RTC has two kinds of Pittsburgh cred: 1) Jordan went to college in that fair city back in the 90s; 2) If we're lucky enough to win one of the two prizes, we're going to use the money to roll out a Pittsburgh version of the website.

You can help us bring Ride the City to the Iron City by visiting the Pittsburgh Innovates website and giving us a 5-star rating. You can vote once a day through October 26. Here's a direct link to the rating page.

Thanks for your support!

A few weeks ago, we blogged about Bike Around Downtown, the bike share program at South Street Seaport this summer.

If you still have serious Velib-envy, you can participate in a bike share program from July 10-14 during New York Bike-Share Project 2008, a program that is sponsored by The Forum for Urban Design, the Storefront for Art and Architecture and City Bakery. It's free and there are four pickup/drop-off spots around SoHo, the Village, and Flatiron/Union Square.

If you want even more exciting bike share news, you need look no further than a press release from the NYC Department of Transportation.

I think it's safe to say that a City-wide bike share program could be reality within the next five years.

You've successfully hopped over potholes, dodged taxicabs, and run the gauntlet of jaywalkers. In other words, you've biked to work. So where do you park?

The New York Times published a story today about that daily bicycle commuter dilemma.

We're working on incorporating bike parking facilities into Ride the City. We'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about what kind of information we should show about each bike parking location and how we should show it. Please let us know your ideas by using the feedback form, or email us at info@ridethecity.com.

The number of cyclists in NYC is growing; you can see them in masses on the streets. The NYC Department of Transportation estimates the number of bike commuters has grown by 75 percent since 2000. That's great news!

But how does NYC compare to other North American cities in bike-friendliness? MSNBC reports that, even though it has by far the most cyclists, NYC stands at #8 (just behind San Francisco). Portland, OR is number one on the list.

Welcome to Ride the City, a website that helps you find the safest bike route between any two points in New York City.

The concept is pretty simple. Just like MapQuest, Google, Microsoft, and other mapping programs, Ride the City finds the shortest distance between two points. But there are two major differences. First, RTC excludes roads that aren't meant for biking, like the BQE and the Queens Midtown tunnel. Second, RTC tries to locate routes that maximize the use of bike lanes and greenways.

Here are a few things you might be interested to know:

1. It's pretty fast! Ride the City searches through more than 125,000 rows in a database of New York City streets every time you run a routing query. We use Dijkstra's shortest-path algorithm with custom weighting based on based on whether a bike lane or greenway exists on a street segment.
2. RTC is only as good as the underlying data. We started from a data set with a huge number of inaccuracies, missing street segments, missing intersections, and missing bike lanes/greenways. During the past few months, we've done a lot of data cleanup, but we still have a ways to go. Like a fine wine (or a Brooks saddle), the routes RTC suggests will only improve with time.
3. You can help us improve RTC's data. We designed a feedback form that interacts directly with the underlying map data. Click a street segment and you can let us know exactly what you think about it. You can tell us whether you like riding on that particular street, or whether you avoid it at all costs.

We're really excited to present RTC's beta site to the current and future bicyclists of NYC. We hope it proves useful, and we hope you'll let us know your thoughts as you use the site.

Happy riding!