New York ? New York City, with its convoys of cabs, miles of subway track, fleets of fume-belching trucks and hordes of commuters, is a long way from Davis, Calif., with a University of California campus and not much else.

But the concrete jungle and the college town were both honored recently by the League of American Bicyclists for bike friendliness.

New York City’s bronze medal from the Washington-based bike group represents an endorsement for the city’s efforts under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to promote cycling.

“The way we think about transportation and how we use our limited street space is changing,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner.

The city is installing 400 to 500 bike racks a year and plans to have more than 400 miles of bike lanes and paths by 2009. There will then be 1 mile of bike lane for every 10 miles of road; the ratio is now 1 to 15. In San Francisco, it’s 1 to 7.

In Brooklyn’s hipster-heavy Williamsburg section, the city reduced the space for car parking in favor of bike parking – a first – when it widened the sidewalk to fit nine new bike racks over the summer.

A seven-block length of Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue is now being remade into the city’s most bicycle-oriented stretch of roadway ever, with a bike lane separated from car traffic by a paved buffer zone and a lane of parked cars.

Bloomberg also has proposed legislation to make it easier to bike to work by requiring commercial buildings to provide bicycle parking.

“According to surveys, the No. 1 reason why people who want to bike don’t is that they can’t park their bikes indoors,” said Noah Budnick, deputy director of the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

If theft is the No. 1 challenge facing New York cyclists, safety is No. 2.

According to the city health department and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 2.8 bike deaths per million people annually in New York City, compared with 2.7 deaths nationally. But potholes and aggressive drivers can make it feel more dangerous.

“You have to always be alert,” said Barbara Ross, who bikes to work and volunteers with Time’s Up!, an environmental group that promotes a group bike ride called Critical Mass.

A study conducted last year by the city health and transportation departments found that 3,500 cyclists were injured by cars between 1996 and 2003 and 225 were killed.

The city announced a $1 million public service ad campaign last month to remind drivers and bike riders to watch out for each other. The city also gave out thousands of free bike helmets, which are required for children, bike messengers and delivery workers.

The city’s commitment to study bike crashes and prevent them persuaded the League of American Bicyclists to bestow its bronze medal. Andy Clarke, executive director of the league, called New York’s 2006 survey “the most extensive study that we know of” into bike accidents.