The District's bike lane additions deserve Mayor Adrian Fenty's applause, but aren't the world's best. (Photo: Jay Westcott)

Local politicians sometimes refer to D.C. as the capital of the world, but when it comes to measuring city policies, the standard is to compare the District to other large American cities. So it was a little surprising when Mayor Adrian Fenty went global at the Ward 2 Democratic straw poll and declared that the city’s Department of Transportation had put in more “bike lanes in four years than any other city in the world.”

There’s no question Fenty is a fan of bike lanes. An avid triathlete and bicyclist (he recently faced criticism for waiving police fees for certain athletic events held in D.C.), the mayor has earned a reputation for greatly improving Washington’s biking infrastructure.

The city had about 19 miles of bike lanes at the start of 2006, and has 47 miles today (including the much-celebrated lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue), according to an e-mail from.transportation department spokesman John Lisle. More than doubling the amount of bike lanes is nothing to sneeze at, but does it make DC. a worldwide leader?

Nope.

And we didn’t have to go halfway around the world to find a city that built more lanes in the same time frame. Just four hours to to the north, New York City successfully added 200 miles in bike lanes between 2006 and 2009. To be fair, Gotham has a lot more geography to work with and a much bigger budget.

A lot has been done during Fenty’s administration to make the District a more attractive place to bike (even for professional cyclists), but his efforts fall short of New York’s. Claiming global standing when he didn’t even have it on the East Coast was Pure Fantasy.