Pete Kocher and co-owner Jessica Murray, of Ride Brooklyn

NEW YORK, NY November 10, 2009 —An economy that's headed downhill is not a good thing. But a bicycle going downhill picks up speed. And the bicycle business has been up in the past year. As WNYC's Ilya Marritz reports, it's counter-cyclical.

REPORTER: Starting a business last spring was a foolish thing to do, and Pete Kocher knew it. The bank told him so.

KOCHER: They're like, oh you guys aren’t gonna be able to get a loan.

REPORTER: But rather than accept a bank's assessment that a new bike shop in Park Slope was likely to fail, Kocher decided to move ahead. He hit up friends and relatives for money, and put everything else he needed on plastic.

KOCHER: A lot of signs pointed to this is a business that could succeed.

REPORTER: All told, Kocher borrowed $45,000 to open his store, Ride Brooklyn, last May. It's situated right on a main bike route to Manhattan, one ribbon of the 200 miles of new bike lanes the city installed in the past three years. They've proved to be a form of economic stimulus.

KOCHER: Definitely we did a little better than we expected to for our first summer.

REPORTER: So far, Ride Brooklyn has made more money each month than Kocher projected. And the store now employs six people, including Kocher and his fiance.

KOCHER: All of our accessories, you know everything we had to pay for up front.

REPORTER: Americans have been spending less on big ticket items - washing machines, mattresses, winter coats – 17 percent less from September 2008 to September 2009. But on one durable good - bicycles - they've been spending more.

At Ride Brooklyn, Lisa Greenspahn is one of those consumers. This year she traded the subway for her own two wheels. She says the trip from Brooklyn to Manhattan is doable.

GREENSPAHN: It's the same time as it is to take the subway, get exercise. I'm not packed in and crowded. It's just a nice ride up the West Side.

REPORTER: She says she's finding more and more cyclists in the bike lane with her - 26 percent more, according to figures released yesterday by the City Department of Transportation. That's the fourth straight year of steady growth in bike commuting.

And it's spawned a demand for a new kind of bike.

DUFFUS: These are our commuting bikes. If you notice how high the handlebar is…

REPORTER: Larry Duffus owns Larry's 2nd Ave Bicycles Plus on the Upper East Side.

DUFFUS: It's designed for you to ride in the city with your head upright. Because if it's bent down then you get pain in the neck and pain in the lower back.

REPORTER: Commuter bikes - with mudguards and baskets, some of them single gear, used to be a tiny portion of Duffus's inventory. But in the past year, they've grown to one bike in four.

Duffus, who's been in the business for 50 years, says staying ahead of demand is like being a really good shrink.

DUFFUS: You become like a psychiatrist. You know your customers' needs, you have to anticipate it and you have to be there when they need you.

REPORTER: But even bike manufacturers are surprised how little the recession has dented them. Curt Davis is with Cannondale, one of the country's biggest bike makers.

DAVIS: When that meltdown happened, it was right when we were introducing our Quick line of bikes.

REPORTER: In September 2008 - the month Lehman brothers died and AIG went on life support - Cannondale was debuting a line of city oriented bikes, known as the Quick. A Quick can cost more than $700. Davis worried that the new economic reality would immediately kill the bike's prospects. Not so.

DAVIS: We had to double our forecast, we had to immediately reorder twice as many bikes as we thought.

REPORTER: And the Quick has continues to sell strongly. Davis says sales have been powered by consumers in New York and a handful of other cities like Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, that are adding bike lanes and promoting cycling.

Seven years ago, his job title didn't even exist - product manager for urban and commuting bikes. But now he says, sales in his division are up 10 percent.