NEW YORK CITY BIKE MESSENGER

NEW YORK CITY BIKE MESSENGER

Bicycle messengers (also known as bike or cycle couriers) are people who work carrying and delivering items by bicycle. Bicycle messengers are most often found in the central business districts of metropolitan areas. Businesses and individuals use bike messengers to send items quickly within a city, where bikes can often travel faster than automobiles by maneuvering through city traffic.

Modern technology–such as encrypted email, and electronic documentation (ex. e-ticketing)–has somewhat reduced the demand for the services of bicycle messengers. Notably, there were expectations in the 1980s that the fax machine would spell the end of the bicycle messenger business, but the industry remained strong. Some portion of the continued demand is a result of need to send items which can not be sent by digital means (such as corporate gifts and original artwork), but a much larger part is made up of legal documents, checks and sensitive information.

This demand can be seen as a result of continued distrust of digital cryptography. Also common is for bicycle messengers to deliver digital content across the city on optical media or hard disks. Although with the introduction of high speed internet connections, the speed of delivery is no longer the main reason for the delivery of physical media, as it may have been in the past. Furthermore, in some instances bicycle messengers are used purely for the air of importance the delivery method lends to a package.