It's an intolerable situation, the congestion that grows apace in our cities with no end in sight, the constant clinch and clench of people in each other's way -- not just on the roads, it's at turnstiles, in subways, elevators, in the stores, the bars, the restaurants, the life.  It's madness, and produces madness: having the basic physical freedom of mobility constantly sniped at and frustrated.  And yet somehow the vast majority of urban mankind learns to accept this dispensation in exhausted passivity, inured to the petty tyrannies of delay.

Christopher Ketcham, Cycling in hell and loving it, Salon.