New York’s Humblest

Combining the bicyclist’s smug cluck with the businessman’s argument that everyone is entitled to make a buck, we have the pedicabs:

The law cuts the number of pedicabs by a third, from 500 to 325; bans them from bike lanes and bans their use of an electric-assist motor the size of a hair dryer. Police can also ban the bike taxis’ operation from any area determined to be congested, which covers most of Midtown.

The law also forbids pedicabs from traveling on bridges, meaning operators living in the outer boroughs would face the expense of hiring a truck to transport their wheels into and out of Manhattan.

Doug Korman, co-founder of Green Transporters Association, was wearing a cap with the number 326 on it.

“I’m number 326,” he said as drivers stood behind him on the steps. “Three hundred and twenty-five for a city of 8 million is unfair and un-American.”

. . .

After the rally, George Bliss, a founder of the New York City pedicab movement, stood by his green pedicab on Broadway. Bliss suggested that as the police, firefighters and sanitation workers are known respectively as New York’s Finest, Bravest and Strongest, the city’s pedicab drivers are New York’s Greenest.

“Politicians can’t keep green transportation from happening,” he declared.