Nice piece on creating the right environment for bicycling as transportation

Green painted bicycle lane, Tower Bridge Gateway in West Sacramento.  Photo: Randy Pench, Sacramento Bee.

The piece, "The Conversation: 10 steps to making Sacramento a cycling Shangri-La," from the Sacramento Bee, is a succinct discussion of how to make cycling for transportation a significant mobility mode in the Sacramento region.

It's written by Walt Seifert, the former executive director of Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates, as part of May is Bike Month outreach.

It would be nice if bike advocates would produce a similar op-ed for the Washington Post, which editorially is mostly pro-transit, definitely pro-motorist, but merely tolerates bicycling, to run a similar op-ed here.

Last fall, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, after a series of meetings with advocates in the various jurisdictions, produced an excellent vision document,the Regional Call to Action plan.  It's the perfect template for conversion into an op-ed.

Seifert lists ten steps which address the subject pretty thoroughly.

1. Vision.
2. Political will.
3. Connections.
4. Short trips.
5. Safer streets.
6. Destinations that welcome bicyclists.
7. Educated cyclists.
8. Promotion.
9. Cultural change.
10. End subsidies for driving.

The list isn't unique, but it's thorough, and it addresses biking as transportation not in a piecemeal fashion, but from the standpoint of the complete process and an integrated system for creating and implementing social and behavioral change.