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$5 million dedicated to Bicycling in Delaware — ready to match with federal funds
Bike Delaware has scored a major victory. On Friday, the Delaware General Assembly voted to dedicate $5 million in new funding for bicycling in Delaware. That’s “more money than the state has ever allocated before,” according to Bike Delaware’s announcement.
Bike Delaware launched their campaign to increase state funding for walking and bicycling this winter. “We recognized the desperate need for direct and strategic funding for bikeway infrastructure and we thought we had a chance of success,” Executive Director James Wilson said, “And we weren’t afraid to fail.”
- Delaware Governor Jack Markell endorses “Walkable, Bikeable Delaware” legislation in June (Photo from Bike Delaware)
Bike Delaware worked with several groups, including Delaware Greenways, the Delaware Bicycle Council and, especially, Nemours Health and Prevention Services, to generate support for the new funding. The turning point came, Wilson said, when Senator Venables, a senior and influential state legislator, agreed to write and champion the legislation. Then Governor Jack Markell, a bicycling supporter who once spoke at the National Bike Summit, provided crucial support for the bill. “In other words, Bob Venables loaded the bases. And Jack Markell hit a grand slam,” Wilson wrote in an email to Bike Delaware members.
We are thrilled to see that Bike Delaware is now undertaking a campaign to ensure that the $5 million is used as a local match to leverage federal funds. Federal funds typically require a 20 percent match, which means the $5 million provided by the state could mean $25 million for bicycling in Delaware. We at the League and Alliance for Biking and Walking – the Advocacy Advance Team – are excited to support Wilson and Bike Delaware to make this happen. This is a prime example of a savvy state group working aggressively to increase bicycling and walking spending and leverage federal investments.
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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July 7th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Darren
By providing match funds for Federal funds in advance, does this help ensure that Delaware will not be returning as much bike-ped funding in the coming rescission cycle?
July 18th, 2011 at 9:09 pm
Funny how Delaware is the state that Vice President Joe Biden is from-not a coincident now is it???
July 19th, 2011 at 12:59 am
Huh? What?
New Jersey dedicates several million dollars of state funds every year to bike/ped projects but I never heard of us getting matching federal monies!
What’s the deal?!?!
August 21st, 2011 at 8:52 am
The $5M million in state bike route funds can provide the 20% state match for TIP projects, with the 80% balance coming from federal programs like TE/STP and CMAQ.
Our first test of that came this past Thursday, when the Technical Advisory Committee of one of our local MPOs voted to add a bike/ped project to the TIP. $120,000 for the project came from the $5M in state bike route funds. But $480,000 will come from federal matching funds.
This sets a good precedent for similarly leveraging the remaining $4,880,000.
On the Joe Biden comment, we would have loved to have had Joe’s help, but he wasn’t involved. The critical leadership came instead from Senator Bob Venables and Governor Jack Markell (the only Governor to ever speak at a National Bike Summit).
On the rescission question, the answer is that the $5M in state bike route money put us in an extremely strong position to argue that bike-eligible federal programs should be protected from rescission. The FHWA released those numbers last week. Not only were STP and CMAQ not cut disproportionally, they were protected *completely*. $0 rescissions from either.
Pretty cool.
September 25th, 2011 at 11:12 am
[...] See League of American Bicyclists blog post HERE. [...]
September 29th, 2011 at 7:30 am
[...] General Assembly did something it had never done before. It voted a completely unprecedented $5,000,000 for state bike routes. With $5,000,000 in state money for bicycling, suddenly Delaware was in a position to access [...]