Why do so few dare ride a bicycle in Miami though it's perfectly flat and warm year-round? It's the traffic, stupid: fear of getting crushed by two tons of speeding metal, the clueless motorists, the near-total lack of bike lanes.

So how does a car-choked city join a growing trend and foster safe cycling for recreation and transportation? You do what Miami -- to cyclists' surprise -- is starting to do.

First, you draw up your first-ever bike plan: Identify suitable streets, create bike lanes and signage, provide bike parking and print up ''bike-friendly'' maps.

And then, to show that people do want this, pick a day to close main streets downtown to cars and turn them over to the citizenry to freely bike, walk, skate, jog or congregate.

Say, Nov. 9. That day, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the city will close off Flagler Street from the Miami-Dade County Courthouse to Bayfront Park, and South Miami Avenue from Flagler over the Miami River to the Mary Brickell Village complex.

Bike Miami, an event the city hopes will become a regular happening, is modeled after the famed Ciclovía in Bogota.

`A BIG STATEMENT'

About70 miles of main streets in the Colombian capital are closed to cars every Sunday and holiday, drawing hundreds of thousands of people -- an example cities from New York to San Francisco and, yes, Miami, are now trying to emulate.

''We know this is our chance,'' said Mike Lydon, an urban planner and bicycle commuter who, as a volunteer, has worked closely with the city on the bike plans. ``If we can get a couple thousand riders out, that will be a big statement.''

The event will mark the public debut of a months-long effort by Mayor Manny Diaz -- eager to burnish his ''green'' legacy as his tenure draws to a close -- to transform Miami into a bike-friendly city.

His aides say it's an extension of the mayor's goal of improving quality of life by luring people downtown, revitalizing neighborhoods and making streets welcoming to pedestrians, reducing auto dependency and carbon emissions.

And they say there is no better time. Across the country, bicycling has spiked as urban living becomes more popular and people seek alternatives to cars amid sharply rising gas prices. New York and Chicago, among others, plan to create miles of bike lanes and encourage bike commuting.

On Oct. 16, Diaz's Green Commission and Office of Sustainable Initiatives will present a Bike Action Plan to the City Commission that outlines where new bike lanes, bike ''boulevards'' and other designated bicycle routes should be created, including, among other possibilities, parts of Coral Way, Second Avenue and South Bayshore Drive.

BIKE LANES ADDED

Some are already under way. When city officials recently realized the state was getting ready to redo part of Coral Way, it persuaded road planners to add bike lanes at the last minute. That means some 16 blocks, from Southwest 15th Road to Southwest 12th Avenue near the Vizcaya Metrorail station, likely will be striped for bikes. Designated lanes also will be added when Northeast Second Avenue is repaved from Wynwood through the Design District and Little Haiti.

''We want to get these things done,'' said Robert Ruano, director of sustainable initiatives for the city. ``These are short-term solutions we can take now. It's not about doing a beautiful map that will sit on a shelf.''

This is all the result of a groundswell of bike activism, led by grass-roots groups -- Emerge Miami, TransitMiami.com and the Green Mobility Network -- pining for more space for cycling and walking as an alternative to cars. Activists got Diaz's buy-in at a February meeting after delivering a briefing paper and a big binder with examples of other cities' bike plans and ordinances.

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