Portland ‘bike queen’ finds worldwide niche

Dallas, others seek to mimic Portland’s biking successes

They call her the “bike queen,” and it’s no surprise why.

Mia Birk, the 41-year-old former bike program coordinator for the city of Portland, is doing what some might have deemed impossible.

After shaping much of Portland’s bicycling landscape in the 1990s, she’s now helping transform the billionaire-dwelling, car-loving city of Dallas, Texas – yes, the one that topped Bicycling magazine’s “Worst Cities for Cycling” last year – into a bicycling haven.

“Dallas certainly is not very bike-friendly now,” says Eric van Steemburg, executive director of the Friends of Katy Trail group, a nonprofit that promotes the paved 3.5-mile pedestrian and bike trail that winds through Dallas. read more here