Recently this editor wrote to Houston's Mayor Bill White requesting ideas to make Houston a more pedestrian- and cycle-friendly city. His response: Jeannie, I appreciated very much your email dated July 1st. I think you have some excellent ideas concerning how to make this community friendlier to bicyclists and pedestrians. On pedestrians, we are trying to do more with our built infrastructure, especially along the rail corridors. We did expand the pedestrian space along the Main Street rail corridor with greater setback requirements. You are right that the minimum number of times that one would have to see an ad would be about six times to begin to have some penetration, according to the psychologists who study television ads. To show more than half the people of this community an ad six or more times would take $1 million plus in advertising. And even then the effect will only be for a short duration. Also, when it comes to the common sense of being more considerate to pedestrians, the particular types of behavior one would have to discuss may be hard to compress into a 30-second television ad. However, I do think there may be some virtue in an advertising campaign encouraging motorists to share the road with cyclists and for cyclists to understand safety and the courtesy required of them to be mindful of their impact to traffic on long thoroughfares. I am copying this email to Frank Michel, who I hope can make sure we give some real consideration to this. It may be worth putting some money, perhaps $100,000, aside in the budget for some radio ads. BILL WHITE MAYOR