The device's champions saw it as an environmentally friendly way to ease traffic as well as to increase productivity, but detractors warned of potential collisions and injuries.
Mayor Daley was an advocate of the plan, noting it is also an environmentally friendly effort to cut down on traffic.
Both programs form part of Mr. Delanoë's larger crusade against what he calls the "hegemony" of the automobile, offering environmentally friendly solutions to the city center's traffic problems.
In the end, the Netherlands and Hungary roundtable discussions focused on the need to a) increase and improve public transportation, and b) encourage the public to take environmentally friendly steps to reduce the volume of traffic.
The city and its supporters say bicycle lanes are progressive, healthy additions to streets that reduce traffic accidents and promote more environmentally friendly modes of transport.
The avenue, whose Christmas lights received an environmentally friendly LED makeover this year, is to be closed to traffic for the event.
Some contend that rickshaws are the vehicles best-suited to traffic-choked roads, and the most environmentally friendly.
The Ladle of Love food truck, which bills itself as New York City's most environmentally friendly mobile noshing vehicle, has found a woodsy, high-traffic home and plenty of customers in Central Park.
By dint of its layout, terrible traffic, large green spaces and high population of educated environmentally friendly types, Washington DC should be a city of cyclists.
Any environmentally friendly effect of the London-Surrey Cycle Classic was negated by queues of traffic in west London and Surrey, as motorists struggled to make sense of road closures and diversions.
