With public transportation crippled and traffic moving at a snail’s pace in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers are , either digging their old bikes out of the basement or buying their first one. 鈥淵esterday we outsold our busiest summer Saturday,鈥 said Emily Samstag, manager of Bicycle Habitat in Brooklyn. 鈥淥ur first customer walked in and said: ‘The subways are down so I have to buy a bike.’ That was standard all morning.鈥 The shop sold 15 bikes on Wednesday. Normally they sell one every two weeks in October. Cycling advocates around the city are relishing the opportunity to get more New Yorkers interested in alternative transportation, handing out maps, offering technical advice at commuter-support stations, and setting up for novice cyclists in the post-storm period. According to Noah Budnick of , the city experienced a 500 percent spike in biking during a . While that strike lasted only two days, there鈥檚 no telling how long New York鈥檚 transit system will take to fully recover from Hurricane Sandy.
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