Staff Reporter
They shuttle swiftly along a thin strip of pavement, legs pumping, in a thin-but-steady stream. Beside them, four lanes of car-clogged Lakeshore Drive; just beyond a concrete barrier, six more lanes of stop-and-go Gardiner Expressway.
If recent statistics gathered by a pair of urban transportation gurus from Rutgers University are to be believed, they are the less than one-in-a-hundred citizens of our city who routinely use their bike as something more than a joyriding, fair-weather cruiser.
They are, as the current coinage of cycling taxonomy would have it, the utility riders, for whom cycling is survival, not sport – a daily fact, not a weekend diversion.
On the city's waterfront bike path west of downtown one chilly rush-hour morning last week, simple logic would seem to defy their scarcity: A string of bright red brake lights, hundreds long, chart their path to the skyscrapers in the near distance as they whip past the gridlock with speedy, silent ease.
With rising gas prices, ever-worse congestion and a growing environmental conscience, it would be reasonable to guess that their numbers should be growing, and rapidly. If cycle shops in the city are any indication, they are: Most refuse to promise anything less than three weeks for a simple tune-up as casual riders dust off their neglected rigs and get them road-ready.
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