June 1, 2008 -- Wall Street executives are abandoning expensive limo rides and their gas guzzlers as soaring fuel costs make them sweat - and are opting to bike to work.
As gas prices in the city hover over $4 a gallon, Eric Goldberg, CEO of Portware, a high-flying trading software company, has sold his car and now cycles the two-and-a-half miles between Gramercy Park and his company's Broadway office two to three days a week.
"I could also take the limo home late but biking back to Gramercy sets a good corporate example," says the 47-year-old executive.
David Harris, 43, CEO of the CBOE Options Exchange in Manhattan, has one of the longest bike commutes - a grueling 50-mile roundtrip from his home in Ridgewood, NJ, starting before dawn, to his office on Broadway.
A fitness buff, Harris calculates daily savings of $60, riding his titanium racer, instead of driving.
By comparison, hedge-fund honcho Mark Gorton, 41, who runs Tower Research Capital, clocks a mere 11 mile roundtrip daily, cycling from his Upper West Side residence to work in TriBeCa.
When investment banker - and biker - Jonathan Knee, of Evercore Partners, chained his two-wheeled transport to a tree near his East Side offices, a stylish area lined with black corporate limos, a driver rolled down the window and looked at Knee.
"He asked, 'did I have a good job?'"
"I said, 'Yeah.' Then he replied, in astonishment, 'What the hell are you doing on that bicycle?'"
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06012008/business/wall_street_big_shots_breaking_out_10_sp_113389.htm
A few fit CEO's biking to work, and the Post makes it look like the driver is a relic on the street. Stories like this only get written at a top in crude.
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