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Mobile mayoral candidates Sandy Stimpson and Sam Jones were asked to write 250-word essays about a Press-Register editorial urging the inclusion of biking/walking paths on the proposed I-10 bridge.

As Mike Marshall pointed out in his May 30 Press-Register editorial, Charleston figured out the bang-for-the-buck formula with the Cooper River Bridge. So did Washington D.C. with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. And over in Mississippi, Mayor Connie Moran of Ocean Springs led the fight to make the new, wider and higher bridge welcoming for walkers and bikers.

What does it take to get the engineers' attention and turn bridges-and-highways-as-usual into infrastructure with multiplier effects? "A little gumption," Marshall wrote.

I think that should be part of a mayor's job description. But passionate advocacy doesn't seem to be the style of our city's current CEO.

Let's stop hiding behind budget restraints. Getting infrastructure investment to work harder for more comprehensive goals is a money-saving strategy. And let's stop running from tussles with state and federal bureaucrats. Both the feds and ALDOT say they have mandates for "multimodal" approaches which is to say, options beyond private automobiles like walking and biking and transit. Sometimes it takes a little gumption to remind them what they've promised.

That's why I'm running for mayor.

See the article here:
Sandy Stimpson: Let's go "multi-modal" with the I-10 bridge over Mobile River