Bikes rule Mexico’s streets come Sunday
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Our correspondent Ken Ellingwood hit the streets of Mexico City on a recent Sunday -- but not in pursuit of the latest morbid development in the country’s violent drug war.
He went for a bike ride with his family, making the most of a year-old city initiative that converts one of the city’s main drags -- Paseo de la Reforma -- and other big roads into a 20-mile loop for bikes, banishing traffic for several hours every Sunday. Ellingwood writes:
On wheels, we charge -- a vast and exultant army of cycling, skating, spinning, scooting, sweating warriors in the thrill of conquest. We rule this city -- at least for a few hours.... We strap on helmets and spend two to three hours on a citywide loop: zooming past glassy high-rises and triumphal statues, through graffiti-spattered precincts where sidewalk stands send up a tang of raw seafood, along normally jammed commercial boulevards lined with chain stores and sex-driven billboard ads. We are Mexico City residents of all shapes and styles, from Lycra-clad speed demons to wobbly tykes on training wheels.
Read the rest of his dispatch here.
Photo: A police officer stands watch at an intersection on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma as cyclists ride past. Every Sunday morning, some of the biggest streets of the car-flooded capital are handed over to bicyclists, who roll in by the tens of thousands. Credit: Sarah Meghan Lee / For The Times