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LaHood meets with Portland’s bike advocates
Portland Mayor Sam Adams and US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (photo: Portland Mercury)
Speaking to a small group of bicycling advocates at Oregon’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA), Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood acknowledged that times are tough for infrastructure investment. ”Do you know how hard it is to find $100 billion [to cut out of the budget]? It’s not easy,” LaHood said in response to a question, according to the Portland Business Journal.
But bicycling advocates made it clear that we’re not going to stop fighting for a share of the budget to support bicycling, a cost-saving and economy-boosting form of transportation. ”Our national partners have been talking with members of both delegations to focus on the business side of bicycling,” Rob Sadowsky, BTA’s executive director and League board member, told the Business Journal, referring to the messaging at the National Bike Summit. ”The $100 million biking industry in Portland — it includes people who make parts and accessories — can be shared throughout the state.”
The intimate reception held for 70 transportation officials, congressmen and staff, and staff of the US Department of Transportation discussed ways that local, state and national partners can work together to reduce fatalities through partnering on big bold visions such as FHWA’s Toward Zero Deaths.
On his blog, Secretary LaHood called BTA a group that is ”working hard to enhance livability in Portland through transportation innovations.” We’re glad to see they are effectively spreading the message that bicycling is good for the economy and good for communities.
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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March 22nd, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Those who recall the 2006 Pro-Bike/Pro-Walk in Madison, Wisconsin recall that the National Center for Bicycling and Walking sponsored a “Traffic Justice Institute” and that Charlie Komanoff and I (along with other panelists, some of whose names escape me) presented various visions of what a Vision Zero (i.e., the Euro vision of pushing towards zero traffic deaths) approach to traffic safety might be. LAB was there too, although I don’t think LAB was represented on the panel.
http://www.bikewalk.org/2006conference/tji.html
Its great news that the FHWA has caught up with those of us on the bike-ped “bleeding edge”. I think the NCBW vision didn’t catch fire because of the lack of large scale resources to get it off the ground. Perhaps Ray LaHood can lead the charge. I suspect Charlie, Andy, and others (including me) would be happy to dust off our contributions and help to get that show back on the road.