N.Y. Hopes to Ensure Smooth Pedaling for Bike Commuters

Even smaller cities are cycling. Flint, Mich., whose automobile industry has largely shut down, is now hoping to become a cultural and health center, and the city is encouraging bike commuting. Tulsa has a free riverfront share program with 75 bikes, said Mayor Kathy Taylor. Louisville convened a bike summit in 2005 and created the vision for the Louisville Loop of bike trails around the city, Mayor Jerry E. Abramson said.

The measures have yet to create another Beijing or Copenhagen, where about a third of commuters pedal to work, or even Paris, where a new bicycle-share program involves 20,000 bikes.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been cautious about larger endeavors, such as a Paris-style share program, though he visited that city to consider one.

"I don't think it'd work easily in New York City," he told reporters recently. "We have some bicycle lanes, but it is such a culture of cars."

Manhattan is a flat, compact grid of mostly one-way streets, with ever-present views of city skyline and occasional sightings of water or parks -- in many ways, ideal for cycling. In fact, just over 100 years ago, bicyclists -- or "Scorchers," as they were called because of their speed -- were everywhere.

But cycling declined with the rise of the automobile. Bike paths on bridges were closed. Cars took the streets. By the 1970s, bicyclists began to protest by painting their own bike lanes or riding illegally over the Queensboro Bridge.

Then, in 1979, Mayor Ed Koch visited China and found inspiration in its bicycles. "I said to myself, 'Gee, I should bring some of that to New York,' " he said.

Koch created several bike lanes, but soon found that they were not being used and removed them. "It was premature," he said.

These days, the number of bike lanes is expanding, but commuting problems still exist. Jockeying for space with cars, trucks, taxis and buses on streets without divided lanes can be difficult, cyclists say.

The streets themselves are warped from cold and heat and underground water, steam, phone and subway lines. Some intersections ripple with asphalt hills and valleys.

Bike theft is a concern, and retailers say the only major lock manufacturer to offer a guarantee in the city is Kryptonite, maker of the New York Fahgettaboudit U-lock.

It's still not fashionable to arrive at the office sweaty and disheveled -- even though Manhattan-based Vogue magazine recently called bicycles "the hottest accessory" and said that "two wheels and a wicker basket become the perfect complement to the smart urban girl's spring style."

The worst news is that most everyone who regularly rides a bike in the city has a crash story. Often it's from "dooring," when a car door is opened into a cyclist's path.

In 2006, multiple New York agencies contributed to an analysis of bicycle fatalities and serious injuries in the city over the previous 10 years and found an average of 23 deaths each year.

Yet extreme cyclists still hold alley cat races, whizzing through crowded streets in a kind of obstacle course. And workaday cyclists are willing to risk the perils for a more mundane kind of thrill: the wind in their hair, the joy of self-propelled locomotion, the speed, the price, the efficiency, the freedom of the bike.

"I think we really underestimate the appetite of people who spend their daily commutes crammed on a bus or on the subway or stuck in traffic in a car," said Wiley Norvell, of Transportation Alternatives. "It's the only non-depressing commute out there."