Biker solidarity? At the time of the incident, in 2005, I’d been riding my bike through the streets of Manhattan for nearly three decades, and never once had I heard anything remotely suggestive of such a notion.[10]
I can’t remember what sort of masochistic impulse had first impelled me into the saddle,but I can tell you from then I flipped over my handlebars and slammed onto the pavement---more than once.[11] Friends expressed little sympathy for my trauma, admonishing me for my stubborn determination to ride everywhere and scolding me for risking my life.[12] “You’re crazy,” they told me. “Suicidal[13].”
How times have changed. These days, when I show up at a dinner or a business meeting with helmet in hand, I get a nod of respect for doing something for the planet and easing congestion on the streets.[14]
New York City’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, gets much of the credit.[15] In the four years of her tenure, Khan has increased bike lanes by almost a third—they now run along 670 of the city’s 6,000 miles of roads—and in so doing has elevated my town into the ranks of such enlightened cities as Copenhagen and Portland, Oregon.[16] Three types of bike lanes now worm their way through the Big Apple: the standard five-foot corridor, painted bright green; the buffered lane, which has an additional three feet outside the green zone; and the “protected path,” separated from the road by parked cars.[17] We’re still no Oregon, with its dedicated biker’s section in the driver’s manual, or Washington, with its statewide bike-route network, but ridership here has increased 71 percent since 2006.[18] Some 236,000 bikers ride in this town every day. Bicycling magazine recently ranked New York the eighth-most bike-friendly city in the nation.
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