May, in case you didn't know, is Bike Month, but five weeks of cycling-related events already started last week and even included a blessing of the bikes at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine with holy water.

On an average day, 112,000 New Yorkers bicycle—up 10 percent over the past 10 years and up 50 percent in the past two decades. (Those figures are less impressive once you take into account New York's population growth during the same period). If you wanted to see the city on two wheels, you can download the various 2008 cycling maps.

Either way, New York is trying to become more bicycle friendly, according to a new Department of Transportation strategic plan [pdf] that was released today (there is other good stuff in there too).

• Double the number of bicycle commuters by 2015.
• Add 200 miles worth of new bicycle lane between 2007 and 2009. (if so, we hope they are not as hideously colored as the ones in Brooklyn Heights)
• Install 37 bicycle parking shelters (did you even know there was such a thing?) and 5,000 CityRack bike parking racks by 2011. (many of these, of yet-to-be-determined designs)
• Install 15 additional miles of protected on-street bike lanes by 2010 and 30 miles from 2011 to 2015.

To raise bike-consciousness in the city, the Transportation Department and the nonprofit group Transportation Alternatives are holding a competition to find the most bicycling-friendly employers in the city. (We're sure Google will be a contender, but our employer may not be.)

The bikes will have to share the month with other commemorations. May is also the armed forces' (National Military Awareness Month), the ill (Asthma Awareness Monthand Stroke Awareness Month) and the ethnic (Asian Pacific American Heritage Month).