Four months later, the officials have warmed up to the idea of riding bicycles to work, especially after 47-year-old Ebrard - who smokes and is not fond of exercise -- warned them their jobs depended on their participation.

No one expects their efforts to bring a flood of bicycles into Mexico City's crowded streets. But the ambitious program has sparked a national discussion about the auto congestion and pollution that are choking the capital city.

Since the program began, tens of thousands of Mexico City residents have taken to the streets on Sundays, when Ebrard's government has closed the downtown thoroughfares to vehicular traffic.

Men and women, young and old, fill the wide avenues with everything from vintage bikes to skates and scooters.

"Magnífico!" enthused Juan Carlos Espinosa, a 30-year-old computer programmer, as he used in-line skates to glide down elegant Reforma boulevard. "This is what we need to motivate us to exercise."

The government plans to build 186 miles of bike lanes and install bike racks at Metro stations and outside hundreds of city buildings. Mexico City even started a loan program so people who don't own bikes won't be left out.

The plan has gained the support of the World Bank, which is giving Mexico City a $100,000 grant to design a master plan to make the city bicycle-friendly.

"Many people have looked at Mexico City's traffic problems and thrown their hands in the air. This mayor is not doing that," said Michael Replogle, president of the New York-based Institute for Transportation Policy, who was in Mexico City last week to work with city officials on the bicycle project.

Photo: Associated Press

Assemblymembers have proposed several spurious "alternatives" to congestion pricing, none of which have proven effective in reducing congestion and none of which would provide revenues for increasing transit capacity.

Assemblymember Richard Brodsky has argued for a car rationing scheme which would restrict car access to parts of Manhattan by license plate. As reported in MTR #558, a similar scheme in Mexico City increased used-car purchases, gasoline consumption, and driving, and decreased transit use.

Further investigation reveals, unsurprisingly, that Mexico City's policy has done nothing to improve air quality. A University of Michigan study found no evidence that the policy reduced emissions of five different pollutants-in fact, the policy increased emissions on weekdays....

...The only effective way to enforce a rationing scheme would be through the installation of license-plate cameras, which Brodsky is on the record as opposing.

When Governor Jon Corzine announced an executive order in February requiring New Jersey to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, environmentalists applauded. However, while the NJDEP is busy creating a plan to execute the order, the NJ Turnpike Authority is fast pursuing an agenda thatwould undermine the plan's goals.

Newark's push to encourage growth goes beyond the addition of new housing: the city and state are also embarking on an aggressive complimentary plan to improve its run-down and unsafe streets. TSTC, along with the Regional Plan Association and others, has long said that improving pedestrian safety and streetscapes can help attract development and assist in revitalization efforts.

As New York City government employees rabidly defend the carte blanche parking privileges that enable their daily driving habit, the mayor of Mexico City has decreed that officials there bike or take transit to work once a month.

According to the BBC, less than one percent of trips in Mexico City are taken by bike, a figure Mayor Marcelo Ebrard wants to raise with improved public transportation, an urban cycling program, and tax incentives for employers who encourage car-free commutes.

And the mayor isn't just talking the talk: Ebrard was "the first to get on his bicycle from his home south of the city to his office in the central Zocalo."

The goal is to cut pollution and decrease related illness in the capital of more than 18 million.

Photo: CyberGus via Flickr