The city took a tentative step this week toward fulfilling the dream of a certain kind of urban idealist, saying that it will explore the possibility of creating a bike-sharing program that could make hundreds or even thousands of bicycles available for public use.

“This is a really big deal,” said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group for cyclists, pedestrians and transit riders. “In the realm of things you can do to boost bicycling in a city, bike-share is at the top of the list.”

The city asked companies and organizations interested in running a bike-sharing program to provide assessments of how it could work.

A similar program was started last year in Paris, using thousands of bicycles. A program with 120 bicycles was started earlier this year in Washington.

On many mornings, as commuters pack themselves into subway trains and drivers squeeze onto the streets, Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the Department of Transportation, rides her bicycle to work.

That the head of an agency long associated with car travel is an avid bicyclist symbolizes what might be a new way of thinking about how New York's asphalt should be used. In recent months, the city has pledged to add bicycle racks and hundreds of miles of bike lanes on city streets and has been exploring a program similar to one in Paris in which people can use bikes at minimal cost.

The Bloomberg administration says it wants to develop cycling as a viable transportation alternative to ease traffic congestion, reduce carbon emissions and encourage physical activity. But the new attention to cycling has also encountered resistance in some neighborhoods, especially when it threatens to remove traffic lanes for cars and trucks.

Ms. Sadik-Khan said her time on two wheels has become an important part of her work.

"It's invaluable to get on a bike and see firsthand the conditions that our projects are trying to address," said Ms. Sadik-Khan, who became the city's transportation commissioner in the spring. "We are really emphasizing connectivity in the bicycle lane network, because all cyclists, myself included, know that it's maddening to be coming along a lane and have it simply end and leave you off on your own on a big avenue."

To that end, the Bloomberg administration has said it will add 200 miles of bike lanes by 2010 - the equivalent of the number added during the last 20 years.

Weinshall Points to the Future
In a speech that seemed a significant departure for New York City’s transportation department under the Bloomberg administration, city transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall laid out an array of measures to improve New York’s pedestrian and bicycling environments, soften the quality of life impacts of heavy traffic and begin to reclaim the sheer urban acreage given over to automobiles. Commissioner Weinshall made her remarks at the opening of a large-scale transportation conference convened today at Columbia University by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.
Both in terms of language used, which seemed to indicate that city government had moved closer to a goal of reducing car use, and the packaging together of a broad set of policy reform steps, the commissioner’s speech may signal that the problem of planning for a future city of 9 million
people is starting to concretely impact city policy.

The commissioner said NYC DOT would:
-Soon announce 5 bus rapid transit corridors, with accelerated construction (starting in fall 2007) on two of them. She also said NYC’s BRT system could become the world’s “most extensive.”
-Implement its recently announced initiative to build 240 new miles of bicycle ways (MTR #540).

By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: January 30, 2007

New York City's transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, is leaving her post to become a vice chancellor of the City University of New York, officials said yesterday.