Both the national and local press didn't think it merited mentioning, but it's pretty exciting (mind-blowing even) that Barack Obama met with 160 assembled cyclists three weeks ago, including representatives of most of the nation’s prominent bike transportation groups. While his Republican colleagues belittle those that advocate for healthy and efficient answers to our energy crisis -- Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) says the Dem's next big idea for addressing high fuel costs should be a horse and buggy -- Obama seems serious about creating better cycling infrastructure. Congressional Quarterly has the goods:

The Illinois senator told some 160 assembled cyclists — who included representatives of most of the nation’s prominent bike transportation groups, in addition to Blumenthal’s — that he doesn’t usually make promises, but they could count on his support.

Bicycling groups already had picked up a number of encouraging signals from the Obama campaign. At a rally in Portland the weekend before the Oregon primary in May, for example, some 8,000 bicyclists were in the throng of 75,000 people. And the candidate gave them a brief shout-out from the stump: “It’s time that the entire country learned from what’s happening right here in Portland with mass transit and bicycle lanes and funding alternative means of transportation,” he said. Portland leads the nation in bicycle commuters: 3.5 percent cycle to work every day.

Compare this to John McCain's views on transit investment -- projects he usually defines as pork and therefore detests. We've covered it before, but Derrick Z. Jackson had a comprehensive op-ed in the Boston Globe Tuesday detailing McCain's terrible record on Amtrak:

For years, McCain, in the comfort of cheap gasoline for autos and airplanes, made Amtrak a personal whipping boy. Despite the fact that governments in Western Europe and Asia zoomed far ahead of the United States by supporting high-speed trains to relieve congestion, promote tourism and now as we are coming to know, save the planet, McCain has spent considerable capital in denying the passenger rail system the capital to modernize.

Oh, the potential of a big-city president ...

(H/T Dave Roberts)