Commuting in Large Cities

[mountainmatt]

How many of you live and commute in large cities? Here in China, any city under 3 million or so is considered small haha. The city I live in, Kunming, has about 7 million people. The traffic is ridiculous, and the bike lanes are filled with electric scooters. Every commute is a death-defying experience! Anyone else ride around in a large city?

[toscano]

I live and commute mainly in Florence but 3 or 4 times a year I live and commute in Paris.
Florence is a little town, Paris is so bigger. Officially has just over 2 million people, but if you consider the whole area we are talking about 12 million.
These 2 cities have a heavy traffic. Florence has a bike path that runs through the entire town and is very useful, the downtown streets crowded with tourists are sometimes a problem.
In Paris, the distances can be huge, my wife is French and she owns an apartment in the 13th arrondissement de Paris. Usually I use a very detailed map, but when I need it I use a GPS. The traffic is always very intense and when it is very hot the air quality is very very very... bad, but there is always the metro

[mountainmatt]

T'es francais par chance, mon ami?

[toscano]

Non, je suis Italien avec une femme Française (née à Londres)

[in2theforest]

mountainmatt, 你是中国人吗？

[mountainmatt]

bu shi, wo shi meiguo ren

[in2theforest]

mountainmatt, 哈哈，我也是美国人. I rode a bike once in Jinan in Shandong province and it was pretty intense. Not knowing the traffic rules, just guessing, while hundreds of cars are beeping their horns at each other. I estimate I rode about 5 miles and that was enough. But at least there is an infrastructure in China's large cities for bicycles.
Sometime I would like to visit the Hengduan Mountains in Yunnan province.