How bike-friendly are Santa Rosa streets?

As gas prices rocket ever upward, more Sonoma County residents are turning from four wheels to two, a trend that is focusing more attention on how bicycles can be accommodated on roads throughout the county.

Bike advocates say times are changing and more government officials are getting the message: Bikes belong.

"We do have a mind-set in the city now, certainly with public works, that anytime they do a road project, they automatically analyze it to see if it's a candidate for bike lanes," said Santa Rosa City Councilwoman Susan Gorin.

Gorin and more than a dozen other elected officials and candidates from around the county strapped on helmets and toured Santa Rosa's streets Friday to see what is working and what is not.

About 150 people, twice as many as last year, toured the 14-mile route that passed 14 city parks and crossed Highway 101 four times.

The goal of the tour was to show people ways to get across town and to local parks using pedals instead of petroleum, said Martin Clinton, a safety instructor with the 950-member Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition.

"If you're going to the store for a quart of milk or taking the kids to the park, maybe the bike is the answer," Clinton said.

The ride kicked off the fifth annual Bicycle Santa Rosa festival at Juilliard Park in downtown Santa Rosa. Organizers said significantly more people turned out for this year's event as the spike in gas prices has fueled interest in biking.

"Gas prices have made people realize that there are other alternatives, and Santa Rosa has made those easy by building a lot more bike lanes," said Christine Culver, executive director of the coalition, which hosted Friday's event along with the city's Recreation and Parks Department.

"I think Santa Rosa is really lucky, and I think some of the other cities are going to have to play major catch-up," she said.

Culver and others point to new bike lanes on Mendocino and Yulupa avenues, as well as the addition of lanes on Hoen Avenue, Summerfield Road and Calistoga Road as important improvements.

Later this summer, work on Mendocino will extend north from McConnell Avenue to Steele Lane. Next year, bike lanes will be added from Steele to Fountain Grove Parkway, according to Jason Nutt, the city's traffic engineer.

Sonoma Avenue -- long prized as a key connector between Spring Lake Regional Park in east Santa Rosa and downtown and other points westward -- is scheduled to undergo major changes next spring or summer.

Additional changes are coming to Mendocino Avenue, where the thoroughfare runs in front of both Santa Rosa High School and Santa Rosa Junior College but has long been seen as inhospitable to bikes.

But there is more work to be done, Culver said.

Recent closures and detours at the Prince Memorial Greenway in downtown Santa Rosa have taken bicyclists and pedestrians blocks out of their way, and many businesses still don't provide places for bikes to park.

Gorin, who years ago sat on a fledgling committee convened to make it easier to move cyclists and walkers around, said in those days the message had yet to sink in.

"I remember when I served on the bike and pedestrian committee, it really was an exercise in frustration," she said. "Those projects were the stepchildren."

Hundreds of cyclists attended Friday's event in the park, which featured games and contests, a concert and a biking-skills course.

While many agreed the city is bike-friendly, others stressed that it has a long way to go. The city government has a program to install free bike racks at businesses that want them, but few businesses seem to know about the program, said Judy Kennedy, one of the candidates for City Council.

"Businesses should be telling people that they have bike parking," Kennedy said. "If I know that ahead of time, I'm there."

Staff Writer Kevin McCallum contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com.