You can help support bike-friendly candidates at a Cascade Bicycle Club dinner Tuesday, Oct. 12.

The Red Bull Rampage, where Wade Simmons first showed the mainstream sports world what the thing called freeriding is all about and Tyler “Super T” Klassen pulled off one of the most memorable big drops ever, returns with live-Webcast finals on Sunday at 1 p.m.

The world road championships are Sunday as well, with newly crowned time trial champ Fabian Cancellara the man to watch.

Bike commuting is holding steady nationally despite job losses and lower gas prices. What we notice in Seattle is that it’s actually up, although statistical latency won’t confirm it for a couple of years.

The Race Across the Sky 2010 will debut Nov. 4. Tickets here.

Attendance at the big bike show Interbike was up 3 percent — nothing to crow about in the show’s final year in Las Vegas (remember, 2009 was a terrible year). It moves to Anaheim next year in early August.

The Bicycle Film Festival, in its 10th anniversary year, comes to Seattle next week (Oct. 7 through 10).

Crosscut revisits the Conlin Conundrum we explored a while back — how Seattle’s leading sustainability proponent counterintuitively supports Seattle’s biggest highway project.

Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin, the subject of our two-part interview, posts for himself on Publicola: “State Overrun Language Serves Only to Alarm and Divide Seattleites.”

Over at HorsesAss.org, Goldy suggests that Richard and the rest of the Council (the ones who support the tunnel, at least) should put their money where their mouths are:

“Why not just have the council pass a resolution restating everything you just said here, that the cost overrun provision is illegal and unenforceable, and that the council would vigorously oppose any effort to impose such on Seattle taxpayers. Hell, pass an ordinance prohibiting Seattle from paying for any cost overruns.”

Meanwhile, Seattle city activist Elizabeth Campbell, whose Seattle Citizens Against the Tunnel is poised to file suit against the tunnel once the City Council acts, has raised a possible conflict of interest against the city’s tunnel consultants.

Q. In a perfect world, Richard, what would you support?

A. I still think the Surface Transit would work, which I originally supported. But I recognize there are risks to it. And I think that train has left the station.

Q. Is there still any wiggling going on re this issue — the mayor’s latest request [for the City Council to reject the tunnel]?

A. No. I don’t think so. I don’t think we heard anything new from him. We’ve been following our own course, and we have concerns. We recognize there are risks we have to deal with. We expect that the contract we wind up with will be stronger than the one negotiated by the mayor [previous Mayor Greg Nickels].

Q. Are the tunnel estimates realistic? The Big Dig will wind up costing $22B with interest and won’t be paid for till 2038.

A. Yeah but that was 23 miles of totally reshaping a whole stretch of area with all kinds of diversions and parks.

Q. Costs were related more to what they did not foresee. The cost overruns dwarfed the initial estimates of the entire cost of the project and were the majority of the final tab, all because there was too much winging it and acting on faith. It’s a little like what we’ve run into with BP, the government giving them free rein because BP said they could handle any leak.

A. I would rather analogize it to the things we’ve done here. We bored a tunnel through Mt. Baker ridge, that came in under budget. We have a tunnel we’re digging from downtown to University for Sound Transit, that came in 20 percent below the engineering estimate for the bid. It’s actually much more complicated than the one through downtown, it’s twice as long because it goes under the ship canal, Vancouver did a six-mile tunnel for their light rail system that came in on budget and it’s ahead of schedule, in [King County's] Brightwater three of the tunnels are finished now, they’re actually 1 percent above the cost, but they were bid at a very expensive time, the other one is stalled but it’s not clear if that’s going to incur any costs for King County because the insurance will probably cover it. The Beacon Hill tunnel, the tunneling actually came through pretty much on budget, but the station had a lot of problems and was more expensive. But this one won’t have any of those kinds of issues.

So the costs that we know about for bored tunnels are not bad. This is very known terrain for Seattle, we’ve already got a bored tunnel through for the Burlington Northern, we’ve got a bored tunnel for the drainage system, we’ve got a lot of stuff under downtown.

Q. At the end of the day, you’re comfortable?

A. I don’t know if I’m comfortable, but we’re not in Big Dig territory. Certainly there are issues that could happen, but they don’t feel to me like they’re going to be big kind of risks.

Q. Doesn’t the fact they’re sticking Seattle with cost overruns indicate that the Legislature is more worried about them than you seem to be?

A. It passed the Senate by a vote of 41 to 8 [note: 43 to 6] or something like that, then it came to the House and Frank Chopp was messing around. Chopp of course supported replacing the viaduct. He introduced this cute language and his goal was to force Seattle legislators to vote against this language and whip up the anti-Seattle spirit around the state so he’d be able to defeat the legislation. What happened was enough Seattle legislators realized the game he was playing, looked at the text he had, and realized this was not a meaningful statement and might cause the whole thing to go down. So that’s why we wound up getting it passed. And the House vote was actually only 49 to 47. It was just a game being played on the last day of the legislative session, and you know what happens on the last day of the legislative session, everybody tries to wiggle something in in the hopes they can slide away with it because everybody wants to go home.

Q. And will it hold up legally?

A. Pete Holmes [Seattle city attorney] is very clear it will not. And the risk of reopening it is if you really had a mad Legislature, especially one with more Republicans which we’re likely to get, you open it up and who knows what happens? They might actually decide to write something enforceable.

It’s such an odd set of political parameters, and the bottom line is we’re better off dealing with what we know and what we’ve got than putting ourselves back off into the unknown. There might be something better we could possibly get, but the odds of that are so low. I don’t think it’s worth it.

Q. Some City Hall watchers say you’re trying to be the anti-McGinn. Any truth to that?

A. I met with Mike after the election. I said this is so great, we’re environmentalists, we can work together, you can be Barack Obama and I’ll be Nancy Pelosi, we can work together and really get things done. I don’t know what it is with Mike. I’m really unhappy and very sad about what’s happened. I really wanted him to succeed. I don’t know what’s gone wrong.

Q. Does this go beyond communication issues?

A. It feels to me like he’s approaching it as a lawyer and advocate rather than someone who is actually running the show and needs to figure out how to make it happen. And I don’t know if he can get out of that role.

Q. Do you agree with McGinn on some things? What about Walk Bike Ride?

A. I’m all for that, I’m interested in getting light rail to West Seattle. The family education stuff he’s doing, we have no conflicts on that. I just wish we could get past these two transportation projects [tunnel and 520 Interchange], I don’t see why we can’t agree on more things. I’m really unhappy about this. 520 is pretty much done but he screwed that one up for awhile too.

Q. On the tunnel equation, for all our skepticism, we hope you’re right.

A. Well, I’ve been wrong before. Sometimes when I’ve been wrong I’ve been really glad that I lost. But you never know.

For further reading:

Cary Moon (People’s Waterfront Coalition): “Why I continue to oppose the deep-bore tunnel.”

City Councilman Mike O’Brien’s opposition to the tunnel: “The $4.2 billion estimate is at best a hopeful guess.”

The unfathomable nightmare of the Big Dig.

Seattle Times: “McGinn hires own consultant on viaduct.”

Seattle Times: “Conlin makes pitch for tunnel.”

Publicola: “Parsing Conlin’s Tunnel Pitch.”

Richard Conlin’s sustainability-packed biography.

When Mayor Mike McGinn, an environmental lawyer and bike commuter with sustainability credentials as unimpeachable as Conlin's, took office in January, we were ecstatic over the prospect of a united green front to tackle mounting challenges facing our region. Finally the mayor and Council could move together on transportation issues to lead Seattle toward a post-carbon future.

So we were at first puzzled and have become increasingly dismayed with the bitter standoff between Conlin and the mayor over what we consider to be a defining issue for Seattle's future, the Deep Bore Tunnel project to replace the deteriorating Alaska Way viaduct. Having seen city after West Coast city make the call against car dependency and in favor of livable waterfronts, we've been inclined to support the Surface Transit option — a boulevard along the waterfront, with former viaduct traffic using the boulevard or finding alternate routes. The surface option is admittedly not the fastest way to move vehicles — but then, in a post-carbon era, the whole point is that the car is no longer king.

The more people we asked about Conlin's position, the more we found expressing similar consternation to ours. Surprisingly, we could find no public exploration of precisely why he supported the Deep Bore project, given his green credentials. When Richard returned from vacation last month, we asked to meet with him. Last week, between a meeting on bike sharing and the wake for the South Park Bridge, Conlin laid out his philosophy on the tunnel. We give him credit for compelling arguments and the humility to admit that for all the obvious work and thought he's put into his position, he could be mistaken.

From the get-go Richard took us by surprise. The $4.2 billion Deep Bore Tunnel through downtown Seattle, he said, is the "green" solution.]

Q. How do you reconcile your longstanding sustainability views with support for the tunnel?

A. I actually see it as the green alternative.

Q. In what way?

A. We’re trying to create a great waterfront park that’s going to make a huge difference in terms of the type of urban environment we have. And we’re trying to put in a transportation system that’s going to serve the urban center effectively and efficiently. So how do you reconcile these? It comes down to: Creating an underground corridor takes your traffic away from the waterfront and keeps it going through the city while you create an urban waterfront center that you’re looking for. I see that as good management strategy. And soaking up all that gas-tax money in the city actually really helps us prevent roads from being built in some of the places we don’t want them being built.

I’d add that from a climate perspective we’re reducing a six-lane highway to a four-lane roadway — that’s a significant gain. It’s not creating new capacity. I don’t know any other city that’s actually taken a central freeway and slimmed it down like that.

There’s clearly an embedded carbon impact from the construction. That one’s really hard to compute, I don’t know exactly how to deal with that. Probably if you amortize it over the 100-year lifespan it’s not that significant.

Q. Other cities have livable waterfronts without an underground tunnel. Do we have to have both?

A. Portland just moved their freeway traffic over. Here we’re building something as well, so why not a tunnel, what’s wrong with that?

Q. They still have traffic congestion, it’s just the nature of the beast that when you accommodate traffic, you get more. In San Francisco, the surface traffic kind of figured it out and went elsewhere. They all have far advanced rail as well. None of these cities escape traffic problems, but they also don’t have the crushing expense of the tunnel. The Bicycle Master Plan has $75 million in committed funding, less than 2 percent of the tunnel cost, with no clear path to getting full $240M financing. We can’t afford to make even minimal infrastructural improvements for bikes — the greenest alternative to cars — yet we continue to put ourselves into deep debt for the dubious cause of car dependency.

A. Vancouver is lucky because they never had freeways, they never created them. They have the advantage of being at the end of the line, so things don’t go through Vancouver.

Q. North Vancouver is an emerging problem. Again, Vancouver has terrible traffic. But it manages to get by.

A. But Vancouver made the decision initially not to build freeways through the city. And we’ve created [in Seattle] an infrastructure that’s going to take time to reshape. The San Francisco model is not as apropos, because we’re dealing with a through route, whereas they came off elevated [freeway] and sent traffic down onto surface streets. So it’s not quite the same model.

The model I think would be interesting to imitate is Seoul, Korea, where they had a freeway that was over a stream and they took the freeway down and re-opened the stream. It was really cool. But they also had a lot of additional construction, you can’t separate the fact they took down [a freeway] with building all these other roads around there.

I’m not sure any of those are quite the same situation we’re dealing with. And from the cost perspective, the surface option was $3.2 billion, and this (tunnel plus surface) is $4.1B, so that’s still a big difference, but it’s not $4B worth of difference. And most of that is gas tax, and gas tax can only be used for highway purposes. We can’t get it for things we’d like to get it for.

Q. In terms of prioritization, though, moving cars instead of funding bike improvements?

A. That’s something we need to do. But because this is the state’s project, things aren’t fungible. And that’s the second point I wanted to make, which is, what would happen if you said no, we’re not going to do this [tunnel] now? There’s really three possible outcomes that I can see.

Outcome No. 1 is you would be able to get a surface option. It would save you some money, but there are some risks to the surface option. Could that $500M investment for I-5 actually be done [adding a lane to the Freeway]? What other problems are likely to emerge if you have to deal with the changing lanes and so forth? How much traffic are you going to wind up with on other city streets? So there are risks to it.

Option 2 is that the state decides to go ahead with the tunnel, and in that case your risk is any further delay or other problems are likely to drive up the cost and create more cost overruns.

The other option is that the state says to hell with you, Seattle, we’re going to rebuild the elevated because that’s cheaper. So the question is what is the probability of one of those things happening and you wind up in a poisonous relationship with the state, which is also problematic for all kinds of different reasons.

My assessment is the risk is pretty high they’d pursue an elevated. They might stay with the tunnel, the governor is pretty committed to it, and we’d get the same thing we have anyway but it’d probably cost a lot more.

The chances that the state would actually fund the surface option — it would be pretty revolutionary for that to happen. Other people read it differently. But my perspective is that’s the risk of getting something worse than what we’re being asked for.

Q. Still, we’re looking at a project that the citizens of Seattle repeatedly have said they don’t want.

A. That’s not true. They voted down a cut-and-cover tunnel and it was an advisory ballot, it was totally screwy.

Q. We elected a mayor that made it the centerpiece of his candidacy.

A. I think there’s a very good argument to be made that they wouldn’t have elected him if he hadn’t said he was going to go along with it. You can interpret election returns any way you want.

Q. Mallahan was not a question-mark, though. He was 100 percent for the tunnel.

A. My argument is this is Seattle. You have an environmental leader who led the parks levy campaign, a neighborhood advocate, had the endorsement of most of the major organizations in the environmental and democratic communities, opposing a corporate executive who hadn’t even voted in most Seattle elections — McGinn should’ve gotten 75 percent of the vote.

Q. Well, they were both unknowns (in terms of elected office).

A. You can argue these things till the cows come home, you’ll never know what the voters were thinking.

[Part 2 tomorrow: "I'm not the anti-McGinn."]

At the recent Bike to Work Day rally in front of City Hall, Seattle City Council member Tom Rasmussen was a featured speaker on the joys of cycling in Seattle.

Rasmussen, who serves on the Council’s bicycle caucus, is a bike commuter and known as a cycling supporter. Who better to rally the troops on the biggest bike day of the year than the chair of the Council’s Transportation Committee?

So why, then, did Rasmussen subsequently show up in a Seattle Times article complaining of “indigestion” over a proposed “road diet” for Nickerson? Why did he suggest he might support waiting till 2016, which seems like a long way off for a modest and affordable project?

Why oppose a road diet at all, when a just-released SeattleStoneWayTrafficComparison indicates that a similar project on Stone Way N., another crucial bike-commuter route, showed fewer accidents, more bike trips, and traffic volumes comparable to pre-diet levels? (Translation: no discernible negative impacts on commerce.)

Why, in short, was a cycling proponent taking such an anti-cycling position?

Interpreting Rasmussen’s position requires a bit of decoding. What he told Publicola is that he has heard from both Democratic and Republican 36th district representatives on the Nickerson proposal. Ordinarily that might mean a broad-based bipartisan position, but in this case it simply refers to business interests which still harbor 20th Century misconceptions that bike and pedestrian improvements get in the way of commerce.

The constituency Rasmussen did not mention having heard from was the bike community. In Nickerson, cyclists have a golden opportunity to make their case for improved cycling access and safety — something they talk about all the time. But they had yet to make an impression on Rasmussen.

Tom Rasmussen (far right) at Bike to Work Day rally: Does the City Council have McGinn envy?

Most notable in this regard is Richard Conlin, who came from a strong sustainability background, was the city’s biggest bike-boosting official before McGinn, and still promotes green, progressive policies like making Seattle the nation’s first Gross National Happiness city. As his Seattle.gov Web site puts it, “My goal as a Councilmember is to work with you and for you to strengthen neighborhoods, foster economic recovery from the current crisis, and make Seattle a leader in sustainability by envisioning, creating, and implementing new and innovative solutions.”

After playing a prominent role in last year’s Bike to Work Day, Conlin was noticeably missing this year — vacationing in Greece. Given his quarreling with the mayor over the Deep Bore Tunnel, though, it’s probably just as well he was out of town.

Longtime supporters of Conlin and Seattle’s sustainability community are scratching their heads at the standoff between the Council president and the mayor. One problem is that Conlin has not chosen — yet, anyway — to reconcile apparent inconsistencies between his long-held philosophies — “making Seattle a more sustainable city, reducing waste, strengthening neighborhoods, improving pedestrian mobility and transportation infrastructure, and making government more transparent,” as his Web page puts it — and his recently adopted positions.

Rasmussen as well traced his concerns to the viaduct. As he told Publicola, he’s concerned that vehicular traffic will face a hard time of it during the viaduct replacement if Nickerson has to “diet.”

For cyclists, the complex nature of City Hall politicking presents both challenges and opportunities.

With thousands of cyclists commuting on its streets every day, and a No. 4 ranking among the most bike-friendly cities in the nation, Seattle is a recognized cycling hotbed. Besides McGinn, Rasmussen and Conlin, numerous other elected officials support bike agendas. Perhaps the cycling community, then, can be forgiven for assuming its leaders will automatically embrace bike initiatives. In this light, Rasmussen’s stance can be viewed as testing the mettle of the cycling lobby.

To its credit, Cascade Bicycle Club, the nation’s largest, is rolling into action. In response to Rasmussen’s equivocation, club advocacy director David Hiller posted a piece on the Cascade site’s blog that skillfully deconstructs erroneous claims opposing the road diet. Cascade has suggested cyclists send “Tums to Tom” to settle his stomach.

The blog SeattleLikesBikes and supporters have launched Google and Facebook groups as well as a Twitter feed in support of the Nickerson plan.

To fully persuade Rasmussen, though, cyclists will need to get their voices heard in less receptive quarters, including the constituencies that Rasmussen said were making him ill.

Seattle is facing a wrenching transition from expensive, conventional car-dominated agendas to new, localized, sustainable, “green” and forward-looking policies. It’s a battle between Fading Seattle and Emerging Seattle — Old Seattle vs. New Seattle.

The former jumps into action any time a cycling initiative threatens to impact truck and commercial traffic — Ballard’s “Missing Link,” Stone Way’s bike lanes, the Nickerson road diet. It doesn’t matter that bike and pedestrian improvements (they typically go hand in glove) consistently improve commerce in communities where they’re adopted by putting more people and patrons on the streets. Nor does it seem to make a difference that small businesses, especially the growing numbers of eco-friendly ones, actually support biking and walking and understand the need for people-first policies. Any time street uses other than cars and trucks are on the agenda, the old guard is going to oppose them.

Representing New Seattle are groups like SCALLOPS — Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound — Feet First, Cascade (the nation’s largest bike club), People for Puget Sound, Seattle Transition, the People’s Waterfront Coalition and the newly formed Streets for All Seattle, which signed up more than 50 supporters to help back the mayor’s Walk Bike Ride campaign (BikeIntelligencer is one).

The results of last November’s election, which swept into office streets-friendly candidates from Obama on down to Seattle municipal races, were a clear sign of Seattle’s changing politics — and New Seattle’s growing influence. But Old Seattle, which still has financial clout and the Old Boys Network on its side, is not going to roll over and die.

Cyclists are a key part of New Seattle. To follow through on the agenda they used to get candidates elected, they will have to work the community councils, precinct monthlies and civic and business groups like Chambers of Commerce and Rotaries.

Cascade’s recently formed Bike Business Forum is a step in this direction; the club also is helping generate turnout for a review of the project at Rasmussen’s committee on June 8.

It will take time and elbow grease — and maybe a few bouts of indigestion — to move Seattle from old to new.

But to make their tummies feel better, cyclists only have to use their heads and feet.

More links:

Seattle Times: Road diet gives Rasmussen indigestion.

Seattle Transit Blog: Stone Way Road Diet Improved Safety, City says.

Publicola: Cascade says send Tums to Tom.

Cascade Bicycle Club’s David Hiller: Here we go again.

SeattleLikesBikes: Support the Road Diet!

Paris bike plan moving forward.

San Francisco bike plan may move forward.

Will it make a difference? And if so, how much?

Conlin’s 12-year tenure, crossover popularity and political capital gained from a resounding victory in last Tuesday’s election have led some to designate him Seattle’s “interim” mayor while McGinn learns the ropes. There may be some truth in the appellation, but we think McGinn’s dedication to civic causes over the years gives him considerable momentum going into the job. And as anyone who has worked with Mike knows, he typically has a pretty good idea going in what he wants to do on any given issue.

We think McGinn’s infamous “flip-flop”— more like a soft-pedal (given his avocation) — actually won the election for him. It didn’t lose him any votes; what were tunnel haters going to do, vote for build-baby-build Mallahan? Instead it won crucial votes from the rule-book set, traditionalist Seattleites who needed a sign from McGinn that he could put aside personal conviction when due process dictated a different track. That said, we still hope Mike finds a way out of the geologic insanity and bottomless money pit of the Deep Bore.

If the tunnel does proceed, cyclists hopefully will benefit from increased surface options in the city. But the big imprint that cycling leadership can leave on the city will involve long-sought integration of bikes into Seattle’s traffic grid and transportation infrastructure. With downtown bike counts continuing to escalate exponentially — the Seattle Bicycle Master Plan calls for tripling the amount of bicycling in Seattle by 2017 — such integration is not only prudent but necessary.

Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Club and the City will spend much of 2010 developing a 5-year update of the Master Plan. It will be fascinating to watch a transportation blueprint put together with cyclists as equal participants rather than afterthoughts. What might cyclists hope for in a McGinn administration?

Our wish list includes:

Completing Ballard’s “missing link” on the Burke-Gilman Trail. This is under litigation, but there are pressures and bargainings that a McGinn administration can bring to bear to “ameliorate” the process. Let’s git ‘er done guys.

More bike lanes. A recent study showed that bike lanes are safer for cyclists than is competing with cars on streets and highways, and with pedestrians, dogs and strollers on bike paths (although bike-only paths are safer). Yet the city has in crucial corridors moved away from lanes in favor of “sharrows,” or on-pavement arrows indicating that vehicles need to “share” the pavement with bikes.

Sharrows hold some symbolic persuasion. But we feel they’re more a sop than solution. The painted arrows soon wear off. “Shared” lanes invite “dooring” from parked cars. And we all know when push comes to shove who gets shoved out of the right-of-way.

True bike lanes on North 45th Street and on Stone Way should be a high priority. And while you’re at it, on Broadway, Queen Anne Avenue, Rainier and Columbia Way. I’m missing some, I know. North 80th or 85th (McGinn lives up there!). And more. (Check out Page yll of the Master Plan for a graphic of what the ideal bike grid should look like.)

North-south bike corridors are in pretty good shape; east-west needs to be beefed up. Cyclists shouldn’t have to fear for their lives just getting between the city’s main districts. It will mean pinching already heavy car flow on major arterials, but that’s an inconvenient truth of reducing car dependence.

More bike racks. It sounds screwy, but Seattle is running out of places to lock up bikes, particularly downtown. Especially at festivals, conferences and conventions, or grocery and department stores — anywhere large numbers of people converge — not only are existing racks woefully inadequate, even light pole availability becomes scarce. New construction still fails to take increased cycling traffic into account, an example being Trader Joe’s in Ballard. As we’ve noted on several occasions as well, bike racks should not be put in the nether regions of underground or covered parking garages, where theft is easier and the “door-to-door” time advantage and convenience of riding a bike is lost.

Better law enforcement. Cascade will resume its valiant efforts to pass legislation at the state level to improve traffic justice for riders and walkers. Although the state Supreme Court ruled that state law overrides local jurisdictions, police can still give out tickets and otherwise make their presence known when drivers endanger cyclists. There needs to be heightened awareness that cyclists truly do belong on city corridors and do not relinquish the legal system’s protections for street users simply because they are not sitting behind the wheel of a car.

Setting an example. McGinn drew attention during the campaign for commenting how he would change the go-everywhere-by-car policy of gas-guzzling Mayor Greg Nickels. Now’s his chance to show exactly how, and to provide a model for dignitaries everywhere about what it means to reduce four-wheel transport to two.

Bicycle advocacy in city government. We’re no fan of bureaucratic featherbedding, but cyclists have been under-represented in City Hall for so long (even though Nickels improved somewhat) that enhancing their presence at the planning table with a few good administrators would be well worth the salary allocations. Any McGinn/Constantine vision of transportation in Puget Sound that moves commuters out of cars needs to contain huge incentives to go by bike. Mass transit especially should give discounts or other benefits to velo travelers. We need fertile thinking to enter the post-carbon society, and there are a lot of creative bike minds in Seattle that can be tapped by City Hall.

At Cascade, advocacy director David Hiller says the club is looking forward to blue-skying about the future, and to being a driver (so to speak) of policy rather than a check-box constituency to be informed after decisions have been made. Cascade’s tireless efforts to broaden its own identity as well as McGinn’s appeal throughout Seattle, especially among Asian and minority communities, were undoubtedly the difference in the narrow election. The payoff will come with a local political clout rivaled only by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition among urban cycling organizations.

“We’re dreaming the big dreams, all of us, right now,” Hiller said.

Obviously the answer is no. Otherwise we would have voted for George Bush, an avid and by most accounts fairly adept mountain biker. The problem was, as much as he loved to ride, Bush did virtually nothing to promote, promulgate or even support cycling while he was in office. In some cases he was outright anti-mountain biking, as when he tried to railroad through drilling rights in Moab’s majestic outlands.

It’s been one of fate’s cruelest twists that all our adult life we wished for a mountain biking president, and when we finally got one, it was George W. Bush.

That said, in the case of Seattle mayoral candidate Mike McGinn, we think cyclists voting for a cyclist makes eminently good sense. McGinn is not only a committed rider, he’s a cyclist with a track record of civic commitment, an progressive with an acute understanding of how cities work, and a leader with a vision for a better Seattle.

The case for McGinn is even easier given the utter fecklessness of his rival, Joe Mallahan. Mallahan has not only shown no interest in Seattle governance previous to this race, he has a voting record spotty as an August windshield. We’d rather vote for the nearest sock puppet than Mallahan. Come to think of it, there isn’t much difference between the two.

Kind of lost in the election shuffle this year, because he’s pretty popular and has only token opposition, is bike commuter and incumbent city council member Richard Conlin. I’ve been at civic events where Richard shows up on his bike, wearing biking togs, and delivers his speech/performs his duties as though he were in pinstripes and tie. I like that about him, because it helps to normalize the image of a cyclist as an executive and dignitary. In other words, a helmet and shorts can be just as much of a statement as blazer and slacks.

Although not the cycling fiends that McGinn and Conlin are, Mike O’Brien for Seattle city council and Dow Constantine for King County executive also have proven supportive of bike causes. Like McGinn, they’re endorsed by Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Club.

We’re excited to have cycling proponents like these running for office in Seattle/King County. The prospect of having elected leaders who not only understand and appreciate bikes but will go out of their way to further cycling causes is a luxury we’ve never had in Seattle, nor in few U.S. communities anywhere outside of Davis CA and Portland OR. If these guys get elected, get ready to rock ‘n roll … especially roll!

SeattleLikesBikes likes McGinn. Unlikes Mallahan.

Jeff Reifman rips Mallahan a new one (also see Jeff’s amazing report on Microsoft’s $1 billion Washington State tax dodge).