Rocky paving way for open roadways

Whatever else Rocky Andersonmight be going down for in history, make no mistake that he is decidedly going to go down as the best mayor a Salt Lake bicyclist ever had.

With a year to go in his eight-year run as mayor, Anderson cemented that reputation with his executive order last week mandating that all future road designs and redesigns must include adequate planning for bicycles and pedestrians as well as motorists.

Think of it. No more streets without shoulders. No more places where the 3-foot rule means either that cars have to swerve into oncoming traffic or bikes have to detour through the 7-Eleven parking lot. No more second-class status for 20-pound bicycles in the constant give-and-take with 3,000-pound automobiles.

Well, that might be stretching it. Most of Salt Lake City's street system is firmly in place and the new law won't fix the old problems.

And then there's always the possibility that whoever replaces Rocky a year from now will trump his executive order with a new executive order that puts bikes and pedestrians back where they used to be.

But for now, the future of bicycling in the city looks very, very good.

And you wonder, why didn't somebody do this 100 years ago?

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Salt Lake City is still a long way from becoming Bicycle City. You can thank too many years of The Car is King Western-style thinking for that. It's still an adventure on the city's streets if you don't have a horn or a Hemi.

In a recent ranking of America's best bicycle cities compiled for the Washington Post by the Adventure Cycling Association, Portland, Ore., with its 164 miles of bike lanes, 66 miles of bike paths and 30 miles of bike boulevards, was tops, followed by Davis, Calif., a college town with more bikes than cars.

Others in the top 10 included Chicago; Seattle; Boulder, Colo.; Madison, Wis.; Austin, Texas; Tucson; Philadelphia; and San Francisco.

All these cities support the Complete The Streets initiative, a nationwide grass-roots coalition dedicated to making roadways friendly to everyone.

Salt Lake City, too, is a Complete The Streets advocate, even if it isn't close to cracking the top 10 yet.

But that's not because Rocky hasn't been trying. In his seven years in office he has been as insistent about safe, all-accessible roadways as he has been insistent that the war is wrong, the Legacy Highway is an abomination and the Deseret Morning News would fit in just fine in Kabul.

And bicycling has just been part of it. He's a strong advocate of light rail and bus travel. He ordered more than 1,000 countdown timers for the city's major intersections. He put orange flags at 189 crosswalks so pedestrians could have a fighting chance.

Plus, in addition to talking the talk he's walked the walk.

He bikes himself when he's not driving his natural gas-powered car.

"He has turned this city's streets around," said Jordan Gates, Anderson's environmental adviser. "I've been here since 1984 and I can remember what it was like. I can remember the dark ages. It's not like that anymore."

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Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.