First, America should never have combined the posts of bicycle transportation engineer and pedestrian engineer; they are entirely different skills that require different mindsets. Second, America has chosen to require bicycle transportation engineers to operate by superstition and political desire rather than engineering principles. The result is a group of employees and consultants who are professionals only because they earn money doing it but have no real connection with the world of learned or technical professions. Without reform of the bicycling aspect of that job, not to be expected, getting a competent person in that job is no more than happenstance.