Photograph by Danny Kim/New York Magazine

The great New York City Bikelash, an event so important that New York Magazine dedicated like an 8,000 word cover story to it, is over, says the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay. Sure, anti-bike Queens Councilmember Eric Ulrich is still getting into nasty twitter spats with bike supporters, and a controversial bike path in Bay Ridge is looking like less and less of a possibility. But this misses the big picture. New York’s bike lanes and bike paths have never been more crowded, and biking in the city is no longer a “fringe activity” limited to daredevils or hipsters. The bikes won:

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
game 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.

Now, there’s nothing like, scientific about this argument. But the anecdotal evidence that biking is more than a “fringe activity” is pretty persuasive—the once-empty Manhattan Bridge bike path resembles a horrifying, real life of game of Frogger during rush hour, while the Hudson River Greenway is packed with bike traffic 10 months of the year. And actually, there is statistical evidence that the Bikelash might never have really existed, at least not in any actually-meaningful sense. A 2010 NYDOT survey found a 442% increase in cycling between 1990 and 2010, while a separate survey determined that, that year, around 200,000 New Yorkers rode a bike on a daily basis. Biking is more or less a mainstream activity in the city, even if bikes are a more common site in Williamsburg than they are in the Upper East Side.

Gay says that the growth of bicycling in New York—as well as the public’s reaction to it—follows “a fairly predictable pattern:”

…nervousness and ridicule, followed by the realization that the truth never matches the fear-mongering. The supposed choice between bikes and everyone else is a bogus choice. More bikes in a city doesn’t merely benefit riders; it reduces congestion, saves money, improves quality of life, elevates the experience. No one returns from a city and says, “Oh, it was great—except for all the biking.”

This is an important point, and it’s one that isn’t just limited to New York. The relatively small investment of bike paths and bike share infrastructure pays off in a myriad of ways, and often despite the negative and often-hysterical reactions they produce. And no city is too inhospitable for a robust cycling infrastructure, as this clip, as well as Mexico City’s burgeoning bike share suggest. Gay’s article is a reminder that there’s more to the bike infrastructure debate than the shrill and overblown “bike lane wars.” If given the option, as well as the slightest bit of public sector encouragement, people will bike.