Coastal Sense

This post was written by Drew Wade.

We’ll see if this materializes, but the Senator from Illinois has been doing a lot of talking about bicycles. A far cry from what some in the other party have said in the last year, Obama seems to get it about bikes. In fact, he has already met with the board of Bikes Belong, the major industry group for bicycle promotion, promising increased funding for bike and pedestrian projects if elected. What’s more impressive, in the recent picture of him riding a bike with kids in tow, he wears a helmet despite knowing that it makes him look like Urkel.

These recent developments remind me of this May cartoon when the other candidates were talking about a gas tax holiday, which as I mentioned here before, every economist and most of America saw through as a foolish waste of money which would actually be counterproductive.

Not only that, but he has suggested making rail transportation a priority, suggesting a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank and thus sounding like someone who understands that fixing our transportation issues is going to take a lot more than asphalt. Time will tell if America cares, and if so, if he can follow through.