The bikes have won, and it's not a terrible thing.
 

Read the full article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...538343738.html

That's the beauty of a bike, a simple machine with two wheels and zero ideology. When you can turn a pedal and feel safe, it's fun and makes sense.

And anyone can ride. There have been cheesy distortions of cycling as a trendy, elite activity—to link bike paths to ongoing gentrification, and claim the city is catering to a hipster fringe.

You want to see what a fraud that argument is? Get on a bike and ride. For every Spandexed obsessive tucked on a $3,000 carbon fiber frame you'll see 100 people of every imaginable background just trying to get to work, do their job, have fun with their kids, safely spin from A to B.

Bikes are New York fringe? Email your friends. Ask how many of them own bikes. Then ask how many of them own cars. If more of them say they own cars, look out the window. You live in Connecticut.

"Zero ideology?" OK, perhaps the bike doesn't have any, but that certainly doesn't hold true for the cyclist.

two for the price of one.....
 

I love cycling and I love the WSJ, so the article was a double whammy.

"...You know the traffic nightmare of getting across town at 4:30 p.m.? Can't get a cab; subway doesn't go there; it's too far to walk. Imagine paying a couple bucks to hop on a bike, and pedal safely through the gridlock to get there in five minutes. "

Best bike advocacy ever.

Paul

Yet the article had to fling the typical BS

Its a fantastic article.

..."Hyperbolic worries that the city was transforming to an effete Euro village... Transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn would open a leg shaving station in Union Square."

Hilarious too. As good as the deft craftings of bike whimsy by Bike Snob NYC.

Ain't it, though? Excellent idea. I hope it's cheap enough for many to be able to take advantage of it.

The entire advocacy & safety forum begs to disagree.

Infidel! You must pay for implying that we are extremists!

Eh, get back to me when The Rolling Stone does an article. Did you see their 8 page Goldman Sachs rant? It opened like this:

It pretty much goes like that for 8 pages.

Still, WSJ does have some style to it.

Funny, and also a good point. New York City especially is so urbanized they're beyond ... what is that term? "Peak car"? The point where you've exceeded the peak capacity of the world to support a thing. Think 37 story apartment complexes, and then they all go to work, and all those cars ........ are going nowhere, what the hell? You seriously think the streets can handle that many cars commuting to work without being 18 lanes wide?

Cars are unsustainable as commuting machines. Motorcycles for fast distance commute or bicycles for quick short distance commute. Cars are for passengers and freight.

Edit: Also the comments.

resonates much better and with more honesty than that tawdry PJ O'ROurke piece from the WSJ in April of this year. what a disappointment.

You're right about that. The rant from Bike Snob in response was also embarassing. Maybe the WSJ has more sense than either.

Marc