City Leaders Worldwide Peddle A Two-Wheeled Solution

"Although an engineer designing from scratch could hardly concoct a better device to unclog modern roads -- cheap, nonpolluting, small and silent -- the bicycle after nearly a century of mass ownership is still more apt to raise quizzical eyebrows than budget allotments."

"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that only five of the countries that it follows have comprehensive national cycle campaigns at the moment -- Britain, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic and Latvia. Poland and Spain were singled out as particular laggards.

And, most ominously for a warming globe, China and India seem to be using their new wealth to pave the way for the automobile rather than to preserve long traditions of mass cycling. So it may seem odd that many cycling advocates are getting optimistic of late.

They acknowledge that progress may be slow at the national level, but many see a wave of action swelling up from below -- at the city level, where exasperated mayors are connecting the dots."