The weather in New York has turned nice and I’ve been biking a lot lately. And I’ve been thinking about biking a lot too since Transportation Alternatives held their 8th Annual NYC Commuter Race last week. The race pits Bike vs. Taxi vs. Subway to see which gets a morning commuter to work the fastest.  The biker always wins.

(Source: Sahrizvi on Flickr)

In my life, biking serves three purposes:  A form of exercise.  A convenient way to get places.  But most importantly, biking is my preferred means of exploring a city. I cover much more ground on a bike than on foot, which means I’m more likely to stumble on interesting things:  street festivals, outdoor concerts, interesting architecture, quirky stores etc.

Bikes differ from taxis and subways in one very important way: they’re free. Without a usage cost, there is zero risk to exploration and experimentation.  And therein lies the parallel to web development and the open source software revolution.  The internet we know today could not exist without the free web development technologies (apache, php, mysql, etc).  It’s only when failure has no ‘cost’ — that creativity can truly flourish.

Would you ever hire a taxi to drive around in circles until you found something interesting?  Of course not.  But thanks to biking, I’ve witnessed some incredible sights.