How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love New York's Bike-Share

New York stands, but only barely. Monday's opening of the Citi Bike bike-share program saw thousands of velo-maniacs tear-assing around town with no regard for law or life. They shouted at old ladies, they frightened children; a purveyor of frozen ices nearly lost his head. And as soon as one of the 6,000 ungainly bikes was returned to one of the 300 hideous docking stations, it was stolen by thieves who, by nightfall, had begun a brisk black market – funds from which are surely funding terrorism. It is as bad as the New York Post predicted. No, it is worse. So disastrous has bike-share already been for New York that many of its residents are decamping for Philadelphia.

I hope I'm not slathering on the sarcasm too thickly. It's only that suspicion of Citi Bike here in New York grew to previously unimaginable heights as the program's Monday launch date – which had been delayed several times – neared. Some of this was based on a reflexive dislike of Mayor Bloomberg, who lacks the charisma New Yorkers expect from their mayor but is a wonk in the best possible sense, pursuing public policy that may not be popular but is likely to be beneficial, starting with 2003's smoking ban. Even less popular is his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, whose promotion of pedestrian plazas and bike lanes had some fearing that Gotham was to become a genteel, Europeanized burg on the order of Copenhagen.