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$1 billion to bicycle and pedestrians projects in FY 2010
For the second year in a row, federal spending on bicycle and pedestrian projects exceeded $1 billion. According to the Federal Highway Administration’s Financial Management Information System (FMIS), U.S. states “obligated” – that’s FHWA’s way of saying spent – $1.04 billion of federal funds on bicycle and pedestrian projects in fiscal year 2010. As in FY 2009, just more than a third ($337 million) came from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus funds.
The $1 billion spent on biking and walking projects is a great and welcome step. It is being used to create miles of bicycling facilities, countless bike parking spaces, hundreds of safer routes to schools for children, recreational trails, and other needed projects. However, it is still a drop in the overall transportation-bucket. Bicycling and walking make up 12 percent of all trips and yet receive just two percent of all federal transportation funding. To put the billion dollars in perspective, the amount of federal money spent on bicycle and pedestrian projects, nation-wide, in FY 2010 is equal to the cost of just one bridge in the Port of Long Beach.
Both the ARRA and the non-ARRA obligations declined from the record spending levels of 2009. This is not entirely surprising because more of the recovery money was designed to be spent in FY 2009 than FY 2010, and the GAO reports that the race to spend recovery money may have led states to spend normal funds less quickly. Furthermore, agencies have historically slowed spending on non-motorized projects during extension years due to uncertainty over what future funding will look like. This means that during years when we’re waiting for a new transportation act to be written bicycling advocates need to push harder than ever to remain a priority.
Data source: FHWA FMIS Database. Note: Coding errors are common, greatly undercounting actual spending rates.
Darren Flusche
League Policy Director
Flusche joined the League in April 2009 and has a B.A. in history from Syracuse University and a Masters of Public Administration with a concentration in public policy analysis from New York University.
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November 1st, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Given what is about to happen to Congress (if the polls are correct) maybe we ought to be proudly telling everyone how cheap it is to use bicycling as transportation, not how much money we are spending on it.
The operative words are “…the amount of federal money spent on bicycle and pedestrian projects, nation-wide, in FY 2010 is equal to the cost of just one (heavy duty) bridge…”. In areas where bicycling can actually serve a serious transportation function (i.e., compact areas with good climate and manageable terrane; throw in high congestion and parking costs as a bonus), we really do provide more bang for the buck.
November 1st, 2010 at 1:34 pm
[...] Via the League of American Bicyclists, new information is out about how much the feds are spending on bike-ped projects. While federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects is down a bit from last year’s all-time high, it still comes in at more than a billion dollars. A third of the money is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which begs the question of what will happen to bike-ped funding once the stimulus funds dry up. Bike-ped funding dropped off some after a bonanza year in 2009, but it still tops $1 billion. Bike League [...]
November 1st, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Why do you say ‘spending on bike-ped projects’. If 10.9% of the 12% of all trips is from walking, and only 1% is from biking, wouldn’t you be more correct calling them ‘ped-bike projects’?
Of course, I have no access to the money spreadsheet so I can’t determine if the bucks aren’t being pushed to enhance the routes of the bikers at the expense of the walkers, etc.
November 1st, 2010 at 4:31 pm
In FMIS, the states code projects as ‘bike-ped’ and do not separate the two modes.
November 1st, 2010 at 7:04 pm
[...] $4 billion, about one-fourth is used on cycling infrastructure. To put this into perspective, is this recent post from The League of American Cyclists: It is being used to create miles of bicycling facilities, [...]
November 4th, 2010 at 9:37 am
[...] $1 billion to bicycle and pedestrians projects in FY 2010 [...]
December 8th, 2010 at 7:10 am
[...] Read more from the LAB here: $1 billion to bicycle and pedestrians projects in FY 2010. [...]