New York City, with its convoys of cabs, miles of subway track, fleets of fume-belching trucks and hordes of harried commuters, is a long way from Davis, Calif., with a University of California campus and not much else.But the concrete jungle and the college town were both honored recently by the League of American Bicyclists for bike friendliness.New York City's bronze medal from the Washington-based bike group represents an endorsement for the city's efforts under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to promote cycling for a cleaner environment and a healthier populace."The way we think about transportation and how we use our limited street space is changing," said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city transportation commissioner.The city is installing 400 to 500 bike racks a year and plans to have more than 400 miles of bike lanes and paths in place by 2009. There will then be 1 mile of bike lane for every 10 miles of road; the ratio is now 1 to 15. In San Francisco it's 1 to 7.In Brooklyn, among the most popular bike routes are Shore Road, Ocean Avenue, the Belt Parkway, the bike paths through Prospect Park, the bike lanes on the East River bridges, and others. A Brooklyn "Greenway" with both walking and bicycling paths is now in the planning stages, and would run from Newtown Creek down Kent Avenue in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, around the Navy Yard, through the planned Brooklyn Bridge Park, and along the Red Hook and Sunset Park waterfronts.In Williamsburg, the city reduced the space for car parking in favor of bike parking -- a first -- when it widened the sidewalk to fit nine new bike racks over the summer."It's better because people used to chain their bikes to trees and house gates," said Pedro Pulido, an architect who parked his bike at one of the new racks last week.