• A: It's the traffic, stupid!

• Q: What's the reason so few people in Miami bicycle even though it's warm all year and the terrain perfectly flat?

Whether it's out of fear of getting crushed by two tons of speeding metal, the clueless motorists or the near-total lack of bike lanes, Miamians have long been notoriously bike-averse.

So what's a car-choked town to do if it wants to join a growing trend and foster safe cycling for recreation and transportation?

You do what the city of Miami -- incredibly, perhaps -- is starting to do.

First, you draw up a bike plan for the first time ever: 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 when main streets in the center of town can be closed to cars and turn them over to the citizenry to freely bike, walk, skate, jog, congregate.

Say, Sunday, 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 new Mary Brickell Village dining and retail complex.

Bike Miami, an event the city hopes will become a regular happening, is modeled after the famed Ciclovía in Bogotá. Some 70 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 city officials 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 Miami 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 the city's quality of life by luring residents downtown, revitalizing neighborhoods and making streets welcoming to pedestrians, thereby 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 City and Chicago, among others, have big plans 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 bike routes should be created, including, among other possibilities, parts of Coral Way, Northeast Second Avenue and South Bayshore Drive.

Some, in fact, are already underway: 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, will likely be striped for bikes. Designated lanes will also 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.''

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