Here's one reason why:
Here we see public bike racks, not unique to just this street, so you know when you ride downtown on one of the many trails or bike lanes that lead into downtown, you will have a place to lock up.
Making a city bicycle-friendly isn't just about bike lanes or bike paths, it's putting together the whole picture.
It really helps, as shown in this bicycle view in Google (which also rocks!), that the bike lane saturation just in the downtown Minneapolis area looks like this:
The bright green lines are dedicated bike trails, the rest of the green lines are bike lanes on streets. I don't know what other cities are like but I think that's a lot of green.
