The other day I stumbled across a 1980 story in Time magazine about the dismal state of bicycling in New York City.
A Reuters article filed today about New York cycling chic shows how things have changed.
The Time article, entitled “The Great Bicycle Wars,” starts with an anecdote about then-Mayor Edward Koch. He caught the bicycle-transportation religion during a visit to China and returned to install bike lanes along two avenues in Manhattan.
Three months later he orders those bike lanes torn out because they weren't being used, in spite of official reports to the contrary. He was probably getting hammered by complaints from the motoring public. The episode leaves New York City without bike lanes.
Velo fashionistas
Now jump ahead to 2009 and Reuters is writing (“New Yorkers get on their bikes in style”) about how bicycling has become so popular in the city that major fashion houses are creating chic attire for bicyclists.
Another mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is credited with this transformation. For instance, 200 miles of bike lanes have been installed in the past three years in his drive to make the city more green.
Successes
I don't know if Bloomberg is solely responsible for this improvement. I'm sure he has advisors who had witnessed transportation improvements due to bicycling in places like Davis, California, and Portland, Oregon. Those successes surely helped convince him to jump on the bandwagon.
And every bicyclist who is commuting, running errands, working or exercising helps convince those who see them that it is not only possible, but advantageous, to use a bike instead of a car.
In any case, it's interesting to see how far things have improved in New York City. Maybe there are more cities that aren't that far behind.
Photo above: Recreational cyclists take to Central Park roads that are regularly closed to traffic; here's a bicycle schedule.
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