A Negative Reputation

In the mid-1980s, this segment of the bicycling community — only about one-fifteenth of those who use bikes daily for transportation but half or more of bikes in motion at any time in the Central Business District south of 59th Street — was turned into a symbol for all that's wrong with traffic in New York City. The anti-messenger hysteria has quieted since, but much of the conflict remains.

In many ways, the antagonism pedestrians and the press express toward messengers is legitimate —they do routinely run red lights, ride against traffic and hop sidewalks. In other words, messengers flout the rules set up to regulate motor traffic. Of course, motor vehicles, pedestrians and other cyclists regularly work around those rules themselves, at least the ones they can get away with. But because some cyclists are able to slice quietly and nimbly through obstacles, they often frighten and disorient people. Many pedestrians and drivers regard all cyclists with suspicion because of the offenses of a few.

At the same time, messengers are a handy scapegoat for problems that aren't of their own making —such as pedestrians who don't think to look as they cross in mid-block or against the light, and car traffic packed so densely that it can't make headway. But messengers are a much easier group to target than drivers or walkers. There aren't many of them (at most 5,000 currently), and they have the political disadvantage of being a small, unorganized working-class group. Rather than maintain an us-versus-them distance, it is helpful to understand who messengers are and how the industry operates.