Bike Fans Increasing in State Capitol

Sacramento is working to turn itself into a bike-friendly city. Jump bikes recently introduced an all-electric dockless bike-share fleet and the city just built new parking-protected bike lanes, with plans for more bike-encouraging infrastructure in the works. State Capitol workers are taking notice.

Capitol Morning Report (CMR), a daily newsletter about events and hearings related to state politics, ran a short post on a few of the people who have discovered the new bike stuff. Assemblymember Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), for example, planned a quick bike trip and ended up riding for more than an hour along the Sacramento River Trail. In his dress clothes. On a warm day.

The CMR quotes McCarty saying that the bikes can help people get out of their cars, reduce congestion, and help improve air quality. Others in the short post describe the bikes as easy, convenient, and fun.

Let's hope more elected officials and decision makers try them out in Sacramento—and realize that same bike-friendly infrastructure could do wonders for their own communities. Building our cities to not just accommodate new riders but welcome them, and offering them easy, convenient, fun ways to access bike infrastructure, will expand the benefits of biking, including personal health, way beyond the current numbers of riders.

Plus it never hurts to see more people on bikes, wearing whatever they want, including dress clothes.