“You have, on the one hand, all the tourists who are here,” he said in an e-mail message. “Then you have people who have left the matinee and people who are coming to evening shows and eating dinner before or after the shows.” Add the commuters who are still pouring out of offices, along with people returning gifts or using their gift cards.

But the pace of walkers in the Big Apple trails behind seven other big cities, including Singapore and Copenhagen.

The international study, which clocked the time it took for men and women to walk along a 60-foot stretch of pavement, revealed males generally walk 25 percent faster than their high-heeled female counterparts.

. . .

The average walking time in New York was 12 seconds per 60 feet, or about 3.4 mph.

Retirement sales worker Nichole Dougherty, 28, from TriBeCa, stepped up the pace, cutting through the crowds to reach a meeting on time yesterday afternoon.

“I walk in heels and I walk fast. I’ve traveled to Europe and we definitely walk much faster in New York,” she said.

Despite being famous for its bustling pace, the city that never sleeps ranked only eighth in the world.

The survey of 32 countries found New Yorkers were speedier walkers than people in London, Paris and Tokyo. Singaporeans were the fastest walkers, at 3.9 mph while residents in Blantre, Malawi, were the slowest surveyed, at 1.3 mph.

Researchers conducted the experiment by secretly timing thousands of pedestrians’ speeds in city centers around the world.

In each city, the survey was carried out on the same day, at the same local time on a busy street which was flat and wide enough for people to walk at their maximum speed. The survey monitored adults walking on their own and did not include people on mobile phones or struggling with shopping bags.

Before the numbers were even public — they were slated for release today — the city vowed to contest the figures, claiming that the methods the Census used aren’t the best way to get an accurate count in a city as dynamic as New York.

At stake are tens of millions of dollars in federal and state funding each year, as population in part determines the apportionment of aid for various programs. After the city successfully contested the 2005 figures last October, adding 70,000 to the initial estimate, Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement that an additional $23.1 million for affordable housing would come to the city.

Challenging the Census’s estimates has become something of an annual tradition for the Bloomberg administration, as this will mark the fourth year straight the city has contested the federal numbers as failing to capture thousands of New Yorkers. The Census Bureau put the city’s population in mid-2006 at 8.21 million, up 2.6% from 2000.

Late last year, the city released a report projecting that its population would grow by more than 1 million by 2030, bringing the city’s total population to 9.1 million, with an increase of nearly 400,000 people expected between 2000 and 2010.

On March 1, the BID’s Web site urged residents to “vote for Jive Turkey.”

“We encourage you to submit your vote and rank your other favorites in the coming week,” the entry continued.

Jive Turkey, on Myrtle Avenue between Clinton and Waverly avenues, serves up a wattle-dropping 15 flavors of deep-fried bird and is a candidate for entry into the new Zagat’s “Marketplace” guide, which will feature caterers, florists, and other stores “ranked” thanks to snarky reviews from actual patrons.

But in order to make the cut, Jive must accrue a minimum number of reviews. Zagat, whose highly unscientific ratings are based on votes by consumers, never reveals exactly how many are required.

Just two drivers indicated on their applications that they were originally from Switzerland, making them as rare a breed on the city streets as the new hybrid Lexus taxis. More than 5,200 drivers were originally from Bangladesh, making the South Asian country the most common country of origin among cabbies, followed by Pakistan, India, and Haiti.

America was fifth, with about 2,300 drivers, and New York natives made up more than half of the American-born drivers, according to the Taxi & Limousine Commission documents.

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