“There was not a biking network when I was there,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, who attended Occidental College here in the late 1970s and today is New York City’s transportation commissioner, leading the way in expanding a network of bicycle lanes. “You are beginning to see the bones of one emerging now, and it’s very exciting.”

Bicyclists have long complained that the Police Department blamed them in any conflict involving a car and gave cyclists tickets for even the most minor infractions. So consider this message posted by the group Midnight Ridazz after its most recent ride: “The Midnight Ridazz would like to extend a sincere thanks to the L.A.P.D. and especially to the officer (whose name we did not get) who recently helped to escort our ride through the streets of Los Angeles.”

Mr. Villaraigosa said he wanted the city to establish 40 miles of bike lanes and paths a year, a policy inspired by his own “nasty spill” dodging a taxicab and a part of his effort to cut back on automobile use here. “No question about it: bike ridership is up dramatically in L.A.,” he said. “You see it all over the city.”

For anyone who lives outside Los Angeles — and even for many people who live in Los Angeles — the notion of taking a bicycle to the roads here would seem someplace between daring and suicidal. And with some reason: two years ago, a doctor was sentenced to five years after being convicted of assaulting two bicyclists by slamming on his brakes during a confrontation in the Brentwood neighborhood.

The resentment goes both ways, as Hector Tobar of The Los Angeles Times said in a column last summer that was generally supportive of bicyclists. “People can be as reckless on a bike as they are behind the wheel of the car,” he wrote. “But stupidity with no steel around you to protect you is a more naked, brazen kind of stupidity — and that’s what drives a lot of Angelenos batty.”

Still, there appears to be a renegotiation of space taking place between drivers and bicyclists as they try to figure out how to share the pavement. And bike riders here say that the notion of Los Angeles being particularly hostile to cyclists is exaggerated.