A new Santa Fe advocacy and education group, Bike Santa Fe, is taking LaHood up on the new vision, which the transportation secretary articulated at the National Bike Summit in Washington D.C., much to the chagrin of some.

What Bike Santa Fe hopes to do is leverage the slowly changing face of transportation nationally — the numbers of adults biking to work is growing — to act locally by changing city ordinances and make cycling safer and more convenient for everyone.

“Our first focus is to get a three- (but preferably five-) foot passing ordinance within city limits, similar to the one Albuquerque passed,” Bike Santa Fe board member Lisa Miles told The Independent.

That would increase rider safety.

Bike Santa Fe also hopes to educate bicyclists and drivers about safe riding practices to encourage more people to take up alternative transportation.

The group hopes to push New Mexico’s capital city toward Albuquerque’s more pro-active attitude toward biking. Last month Albuquerque was named the 17^th most bike-friendly city in the country by Bicycling magazine (Minneapolis, Minn. was No. 1).

Achieving those goals

Bike Santa Fe will take a step toward its goal of getting a five-foot pass law by attending a meeting 5:30 p.m. today of the Bicycle Trails Advisory Committee (BTAC) at city hall. BTAC has asked community members to attend so they can take their findings to the city council on the possible ordinance.

“Behavior needs to change before something happens,” Bike Santa Fe board member Christopher Ryan said at the group’s Wednesday meeting. He was emphasizing the importance not to advocate after an accident occurs and someone is seriously injured, but before.

There are other fringe benefits to increased bicycling too: increased health.

The Center for Disease Control’s Kids Walk-to-School program encourages kids to walk and bike to school in order to fight childhood obesity and raise the level of physical activity in youth. Additional neighborhood friendly side effects that the CDC anticipates from the program are “improved neighborhood safety” and “fewer cars congesting the pick-up and drop-off points at the school.”

The current state of affairs in Santa Fe

According to the city of Santa Fe’s Bikeways and Trails map only Santa Fe High School, Santa Fe Indian School and New Mexico School for the Deaf are accessible from bike-only trails, with the majority of elementary and middle schools located off roads and only a few located on roads with bike lanes. The city’s three colleges fare worse, with none accessible from lower-speed, shared roads.

The city, however, is working to improve things one bike path at a time and has a survey available for commuters to let the city know how and why they commute the way they do.

Tom Towbridge, Bicycle, Pedestrian and Equestrian Coordinator  for the state’s transportation agency, told the Independent future plans include extending the Santa Fe River Trail – which currently runs a portion of Alameda from downtown through the Casa Solana neighborhood – to Frenchy’s Park. That would alleviate one of Santa Fe’s most dodgy routes, a part of Agua Fria Road on which bike lanes disappear and reappear seemingly out of nowhere.

Despite efforts such as city sponsored Bike to Work Week (Santa Fe’s takes place from May 17-21) and advocacy groups such as Bike Santa Fe, adults in town are less likely to bicycle than kids like their counterparts across the nation.

The national picture

A 2005 survey of 250,000 people living in population centers of 65,000 or more people found that only 0.4 percent of Americans commute to work and another 2.5 percent walk.

Bicyclists beat out only motorcyclists at 0.2 percent and cab riders at 0.1 percent. A whopping 77 percent of the population drives alone and 10.7 percent carpool, the survey found. Even the city with the highest percentage of bicyclists (Portland, Oregon) found only 3.5 percent of its population cycling to work.

While that’s a small segment of the population, the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (PDF) found that in 2008 alone 716 cyclists were killed nationally in traffic-related accidents while another approximately 52,000 suffered injuries. That same year seven of New Mexico’s 366 traffic fatalities were bicyclists.

Cycling advocates cite a variety of reasons for death and injury, the most numerous causes being driver error and road design.

Santa Fe’s most hazardous intersection, at Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive, poses an additional hazard to cyclists with railroad tracks running right through the intersection, through which one of the city’s bike paths takes riders – though the trail ends shortly before the intersection and picks up again on the other side.

The Bicycle Commuter Act was among hundreds of earmarks federal lawmakers buried in the fine print of House Resolution 1424, aka the $700 billion bailout. It provides a way for employers to give bicycle commuters a whopping $20 a month as a tax-free fringe benefit. It’s not a lot of money, expected to cost the nation a mere $1 million a year, but it has the potential to be a big deal for bike commuters.

“It’s a good start,” said Craig Degenhardt, president of BikeABQ and avid bicycle commuter. “Now we just need to expand it.”

Sponsored by Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the Bicycle Commuter Act is a voluntary plan that an employer must agree to participate in. Any employer, large or small, public or private, can sign up, says the League of American Bicyclists. Smaller operations can offer the $20 as a pre-tax monthly bonus to qualifying employees; larger employers can opt for a a direct-payment method that would require employees to bring in receipts to be reimbursed.

The program is modeled after similar programs in place for years that benefit highway commuters — and which cost U.S. taxpayers $4.4 billion a year, the bicyclist league says. The $20 benefit for pedal-pushers is modest in comparison to that for mass-transit and carpool commuters, which give participating employees $115 or $210 a month, respectively.

According to the league, Blumenauer and members of the congressional bike caucus tried to set the bicycle benefit at $80 a month, but critics blocked it. The $20 per month figure was a compromise.

But the commuter act wasn’t official until it was inserted in the bailout bill — and that was just to get Blumenauer’s vote, who had been a holdout, Degenhardt said. “It was a bribe,” he said, though ultimately one that didn’t work. Blumenauer still voted against the bailout.

While Degenhardt said he appreciates the new fringe benefit, there’s lots of room for improvement. “This is great in that cyclists are getting their foot in the door,” he said. But at $20 a month, “It’s not going to get anyone to buy a bike to start commuting. It’s good for us already cycling to work — we’ll be able to buy a replacement light or fix a flat. But it’s not enough to induce anyone to take up commuting.”

Andrew Webb, who bike commutes daily to work at the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, echoed Degenhardt’s assessment. “It strikes me as a bit of a token effort, but a token effort in the right direction,” he said. “I don’t personally need an incentive, but I like that it would possibly encourage other people in a workplace who don’t bicycle commute to consider it.”

More people might commute by bicycle if the streets were safer, Webb said. And while the $20 monthly perk may not seem like much, the Bicycle Commuter Act could end up having a long-term positive effect, he said. “If it gets more people riding, it could spur the city to improve the infrastructure, like adding bike lanes,” he said.

One avid bicyclist who also happens to be an editor for The New York Times, writing in the newspaper’s blog Green Inc., said the commuting law is long overdue. “It remains to be seen whether businesses will in fact begin showering their sweaty, two-wheeled workers with rewards and incentives,” wrote Andrea Kannapell. “But celebration is still in order.”