“I’m comfortable now, but it took a while to get used it,” she said. If she has to drop off her daughter at school, she often has her husband also drop her off at work so she can ride her bike home.

“There was a period where we thought about getting another car but held off because it was too expensive,” she said. “We definitely saved money on insurance, and I don’t have to go to the gym.”

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David Streever lives in the Fan District. He is a writer, currently working on bike travel guides for Connecticut and Long Island, N.Y. He and his wife moved to Richmond a couple of months before the UCI Road World Championships in September.

“It was perfect, just in time for the bike races,” he said. It made an immediate impression on him that Richmond welcomed people who like to bike.

His bike commute is less than a mile, but he figures that he bikes at least 5 miles a day, including going to business meetings and restaurants and running errands.

The convenience of biking is a big lure for him.

“Parking is tough in Richmond. I love that I can bike up to a restaurant, lock up and not worry about finding a parking spot,” he said.