The nature of the hate has changed. Once, they hated us because we were a rarity, like a rat in the kitchen, a pest. Now, they hate us because we are ubiquitous.

In a 12-hour survey one day last summer, the city counted 12,583 bikers on the Staten Island Ferry, the East River bridges and the Hudson River bike path  up 35 percent from the year before in what Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, called an “unprecedented increase.” Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group, estimates that 131,000 bikers in the city commute to work daily.

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There was a time when bikers couldn’t imagine the city giving to us, even when it tried. In a previous earth-friendly period, Mayor John Lindsay chickened out on bike lanes after Fifth Avenue businesses complained. In 1980, before “sustainable” was everybody’s middle name, Mayor Ed Koch put in bike lanes separated by concrete and asphalt barriers on Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, and then ripped them out after not seeing any bikers in them.

Today, the Transportation Department has gotten serious about biking, and in just three years, the agency has painted bike lanes (good), constructed bike lanes separated by parked cars (great) and bike lanes separated by medians or barriers (the best) and installed bike signals, bike signs and many bike symbols painted on the street. Some of these symbols are clear, although I’m not sure I understand others. What do the biker and double arrows mean when painted on a busy street without a bike lane? Good luck?

Though bikers are hated, pedestrian deaths and injuries on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea immediately declined in the area of the physically separated bike lane, as reported on streetsblog.org, news blog of the Livable Streets Initiative, which advocates creating sustainable cities. In December, Community Board 4 voted in favor of creating a bike lane on Eighth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets.

There are still detractors; Fox News aired a report a few months ago blaming the new bike lane on Grand Street for not only clogging up car traffic in Lower Manhattan but  potentially!  putting pedestrians’ lives in danger. Less reported was the story of the biker who was  actually!  killed by a truck driver in a hit-and-run in October. But despite such criticism, people are gradually losing the car-centric view of Manhattan and are sensing that the streets are for more than automobiles.

We bikers, in other words, have been on the receiving end. Now, as much as we would perhaps prefer not to, we must stop to look at ourselves and realize that we have a little giving to do. I am talking about perceptions, about the things we should do outside the letter of the law, like the way we try not to kill the person in front of us in the revolving doors.