More than 6,000 cyclists managed to bring San Francisco commuters to a dead stop last Friday evening, an action that illuminated a long-standing controversy in this proud (some would say conceited) city -- just how easy should it be to drive through town. The lines in this battle are clearly drawn and visible; the question is how to find an acceptable path between the opposed forces. Travis Lea is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about Bay Area young people produced by Pacific News Service.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Violent quakes are nothing new to the San Francisco Bay Area but the aftershocks are not always predictable. The 1989 earthquake sent freeways crashing down, and now that unplanned rearrangement of the infrastructure has opened a new rift between defenders of an ever-expanding car culture and eco-topians promoting alternatives to the auto.

Both sides are blessed with absolute certainty, "If you have a city, you need a freeway going through the center of it," one neighborhood activist told reporters. "It makes sense." Supporters of "Critical Mass," which conducts monthly bike rides through San Francisco streets, are passionate about blocking ever more costly highways, behemoth trucks, and road rage.

Last Friday, 6000 or more bikers snarled San Francisco traffic for hours. Their message was clear: Bay Area residents better choose what side they stand on -- highways or bike lanes -- or find themselves stranded in city intersections at all hours.

"People want alternatives but are forced to take cars," says David Snyder, executive director of the SF Bicycle Coalition. "Most people don't see the trend changing, because the auto industry spends a billion dollars a year on advertising."

Cyclists say cars turn people into monsters. "You're in a box and you're totally cut off from the world around you," says one bike courier.

"Road rage is a symptom of a contradiction between the image and promise of cars and the reality," Snyder adds. "You never see a car ad showing someone stuck in traffic."

Following the promising lead of Portland and Seattle, the San Francisco Department of the Environment recently released a comprehensive "Sustainability Plan" which calls for barring autos holding only one person, eventually closing principal downtown thoroughfares to private cars and installing people-movers.

City Transportation Planner Peter Albert says such a plan is particularly logical here. "We're not like Houston or L.A., which have been taken over by the freeway. The quality of life here is legendary in so many ways... It is San Francisco's biggest asset, and we're starting to recognize these things and make them sustainable for the long term."

Not everyone agrees. Across the bay in Oakland, the opening of the most costly freeway ever built -- at $250 million per mile -- was greeted by much fanfare. And San Francisco highway backers have found unexpected support in the city's increasingly vocal Asian community. Chinatown merchants -- angered when the freeway closest to them, damaged by the earthquake, was shut down -- are now planning a huge parking garage to lure more autos.

The auto, anti-auto rift spread to Washington last month, as the Clinton administration surprised both environmentalists and industry leaders by endorsing tighter strictures for the Clean Air Act -- regulations that auto-glutted cities like San Francisco will be hard pressed to meet. Meanwhile, in Detroit, auto manufacturers are gearing up to produce "monster trucks" -- massive "sport utility vehicles" that weigh more than three tons and get 14 miles or less to a gallon. Through a loophole in the law, these are considered "light trucks" and so do not have to meet federal fuel economy standards.

No conversation about transportation gets far without someone saying, "But in Europe...." In European cities, facing a much more critical lack of resources, electric cars, pedestrian malls, bike lanes and light railways are fast becoming the norm.

Certainly, the lines are clearly drawn. The question is whether San Francisco will be able to find a sustainable compromise between the forces of pedal power and the lovers of the automobile.