When I lived in Detroit, I usually bike commuted to work, a distance of about 6 miles. It didn’t take me very long on a bicycle, and the trip was hardly strenuous, but my friends and neighbors often looked astonished to see me biking around, especially when I biked to the local farm market on the weekends, which because of the way the roads worked I could do faster than driving.

“Did your car break down?” they’d ask me.

But the thing is, when I lived in Manhattan, I got used to driving only to go out of town for the weekend or something like that.

Which raises a question. Since walking is probably about as common in New York City as it is in France, I wonder what the numbers look like.