Here's a tip of the hat to the folks at Nice Ride Minnesota. The popular bike sharing program was named as one of the 10 best in the nation by Paul DeMaio, a transportation consultant and co-author of the Bike-sharing Blog as reported in the Wednesday edition of USA Today.

The Twin Cities has always been a top five city for bicycling, so it's not surprising that the bike sharing program has found a loyal following, he wrote. Figures from Nice Ride indicate that users of system took 405,000 rides last season.

"It's a good way to get from downtown on trails to the University of Minnesota," DeMaio said of the system, which with 170 stations is the fourth of the largest in the nation.

The down side is that the system shuts down from November to April, but opening day is not that far a way. The Nice Ride folks tell the Drive that they have some new things planned for 2015 and will be sharing that information soon.

For those heading out of town, here are the other nine cities that made DeMaio's list of the nation's best bike shares which ran in the USA Today.

  • Citi Bike in New York City
  • Capital Bikeshare in Washington D.C.
  • Divvy in Chicago
  • Austin B-cycle in Austin, Texas
  • Hubway in the Boston and surrounding area
  • Bay Area Bike Share in the San Francisco region
  • Devner B-cycle in Denver
  • Charlotte B-cycle in Charlotte, N.C.
  • Bike Chattanooga in Chattanooga, Tenn.