Every spring, we watch a competition more intently than we do the Tour de France: Transportation Alternative's annual commuter race, in which cars, bikes and the subway battle for the top transit time. This year's contestants zoomed from Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza to the Lower East Side's Tenement Museum. The biker (25 minutes) trumped the subway (32 minutes), which kicked the taxi's ass (40 minutes). The commuter race only reinforces an unfortunate truism: mass transportation and cab rides are for suckers. These days, the MTA is threatening a fare increase every other month. A few less transit workers here, a few less trains running at night, a couple transit strikes there and voila! It's monopoly economics, with one low-cost, get-out-of-jail-free card: a bike. Yeah, yeah, the cops are kicking some Critical Mass ass, but bikes remain the city's only reliable form of transportation. They're never threatened by blackouts, strikes or sporadic late-night service. Sure, you could blow a tire or spill your brains like soup, but you're going to die anyway so why worry?