It's so cold the gears need defrosting, roads are like ice rinks and helmets are strapped over full-face balaclavas.

But the mayor of the favourite city for cycling in the United States says if Minneapolis can achieve what it has, there's no reason Melbourne and other Australian cities can't follow.

Almost halfway across a country famed for its car culture and with a climate to test the bravest – think snow ploughs and Fargo – Minneapolis doesn't strike as one where commuters would prefer the saddle over the car heater.

NEW YORK — Bicycle lanes, cycling lessons for adults, and soon 10,000 bikes in a sharing program: New York is pedaling hard to join the world's growing love affair with the bicycle.

The number of New Yorkers taking the two-wheeled option to commute has doubled in the last five years, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office. They are still a relatively rare sight as they zigzag between the yellow cabs and heavy traffic pouring through Manhattan each rush hour.

Before there were cars, cyclists agitated for smooth, paved roads. In 1896 there was a massive protest in San Francisco with five thousand cyclists, demanding that roads be improved, with the motto “Where There Is a Wheel, There Is a Way.” The roads belonged to the bike.

Here Mikael Colville-Andersen (author of Copenhagenize.com and Copenhagen Cycle Chic) talks about cycling and its infrastructure in Copenhagen, Denmark. Among other things he explains how the city got to the point of having 37% of trips made by bicycle, and how the city features a "green wave" for a certain bike lane - travelling at 20km/h a cyclist will get green lights all the way into the city.

The city of Long Beach is undergoing a transformation: the goal of the council is to make Long Beach the most bike-friendly city in the USA. With a bike-friendly mayor and big support from the city council and many businesses, their plans are ambitious. They are thinking big and acting fast.

City staff wants to dedicate a lane of University Avenue to cyclists this summer, insisting it won't slow automobile traffic, as they create a denser bike network downtown.

Transportation staff is proposing bicycle lanes along University Avenue and Queen's Park Crescent.

Both roads have four lanes in each direction, with a median in between. If a pilot project is approved, one lane in each direction adjacent to the median will be dedicated to cyclists, using flexible bollards to protect them from traffic, from July to September.

While we were down in Washington, DC for the National Bike Summit, Streetfilms got the chance to check out some of the innovative bike infrastructure. Tops on our list: the city's first protected, contraflow lane for bicyclists. The district DOT has redesigned 15th Street NW between U Street and Massachusetts Avenue to accommodate two-way bike traffic on a one-way street.