Totally missing the point department

Mayor Mick Cornett of OKC has decided OKC needs to go on a diet. Full story is here.

Okay, if you read the story you'll see that they came up with their rankings by looking at: "lifestyle factors in each city, including fast-food restaurants per capita and availability of city parks, gyms and bike paths".

I doubt they are going to close any fast-food restaurants (and there are a TON in OKC).

Bike paths are almost non-existent, there's one (I think it's probably completed since it was close to being done when I lived there 3 years ago) that goes from "Hotel Row" on Meridian to Bricktown, I didn't know of any others and it wasn't exactly useful for anything other than going to Bass Pro Shop. But even if there were bikepaths, none of the stores have bike racks and even a lot of the libraries and schools don't have bike racks - so there's no place to park a bike when you take one. Motorists are downright hostile to bikers (driving as close behind as possible and honking and yelling at them - even when they could go around).

Sidewalks are almost nonexistent in most of the city. And you can't walk ANYWHERE. Most roads have no shoulder/breakdown lane and many are along unmown fields that probably have venomous snakes and certainly have ticks (so it's not safe to walk in the field).

Mayor Cornett would do better to plan and implement some bike paths, add sidewalks and bike racks and do a public campaign encouraging biking and educating motorists about bike safety (and ticketing the idiots that are hostile to bikers). Going on a diet will not address the things that got them on the fattest city list. It's another example of placing the blame solely on the individual and refusing to look at the community's culpability.