The Path to Less Pollution : If cities and states provided safe bike trails, many workers say their vehicles of choice would be 2-wheelers.

“We’ve approached the growth of bicycling as something good for the environment,” Mary Travis, a transit manager for the Ventura County Transportation Commission, told me last week. She was referring to her work with the county, but also to a column I wrote touting commuting by bike as a way to clean up the environment.

“But biking is good for the interior environment too,” she said. “It increases cardiovascular performance, and that lessens the threat of heart problems.”

By focusing just on the environmental aspect of bike riding, Travis and I both may have missed the point. According to a recently released Lou Harris poll, people bike for fun and fitness first--and for saving the planet second.

It’s not, however, just a simple case of confused priorities.

“More than half of America’s 82 million cyclists would pedal to work if there were safe bike paths or bike lanes on roads and highways,” the pollsters announced last month. In other words, folks who are already out there pedaling for fun and fitness would leave their cars at home if cities and states did their part.

Travis’ work keeps her up to date on such public pressures. It also gives her the chance to see the public’s response to new bike paths.

“The minute we build (one) in this county, they come,” she observed.

Ventura County, it should be noted, is in the lead for this kind of thing. Last month the Oxnard-Ventura Bicycle Club “adopted” a bike path to clean up in the way other service clubs have “adopted” highways to keep them free of litter and debris.

Although it was reported by several newspapers that this was the first such program in California, it turns out our virtue extends beyond our border. I called J. C. McCullagh, publisher of Bicycling Magazine in Emmaus, Penn., and learned that there is no such bike path adoption program on record anywhere. So we’re first in America, folks.

There’s something else we can be proud of. A national campaign is now going on to convert unused railway rights-of-way into bike paths--but we’re ahead there too. We can already bike from Ventura to Ojai without huffing and puffing up the hill, thanks to a gradual-rise rail right-of-way that county builders already thought to construct.

Simi Valley, following the same “user-friendly” principle, will soon open up a cross-town bikeway on flood control routes, according to Travis. All of these routes are detailed in a map Travis’ office provides to callers. “It’s very, very popular,” she said. “Your tax dollars at work.”

Sensing a similar appetite by bike riders outside Ventura County, the California Senate this summer passed the Comprehensive Bike Bill to fund and promote bike commuting. Washington is still wrangling over a comparable U. S. congressional measure, introduced by Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), among others.

There are probably a few oil and auto states out there that don’t like the idea that 23% of all American adults might commute to work by bike if there were safe, designated bicycle paths.

But that doesn’t much matter. One of the greatest things about pedal power is that no one has you by the dipstick.

* FYI

* For information on recreation and training programs of the Oxnard-Ventura Bicycle Club, call 850-1794.

* For the latest Ventura County bike path map, call 642-1591. Be sure to specify the 1992-93 edition.

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has a national directory of bike trails in 40 states. Write to them at 1400 16th St. NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C., 20036.

* The League of American Wheelmen publishes two useful guides on the benefits of bike commuting, including one for employers who want to provide at-work facilities for bikes. For more information, call (800) 288-BIKE.