We are watching this legislation carefully and are raising this issue with Congress. Right now, we want to show the Senate how important the right to the road is to cyclists – and voters. As part of our “I Bike. I Vote.” campaign, please sign our petition opposing the mandatory sidepath provision.

Sign the petition.

We will keep you updated on our progress on the mandatory sidepath clause and other critical issues in the proposed legislation. An action alert may be needed at some point. In the meantime, you can register for the National Bike Summit, where together we will make the very strong case for bicycling to Congress.

I Bike. I Vote. Sign the petition.

Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

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.

While Sen. Paul once again railed against “squirrel sanctuaries,” as a possible use of Enhancement funds, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) pointed out that Paul’s amendment would actually hinder bridge repair in certain instances. “The amendment prevents a bridge from being fixed if it is a historic bridge,” Boxer said. “There are thousands of those in this country, including the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Senator Rand Paul's anti-bike amendment failed by a vote of 38 to 60.

This was the third time in two months that the Senate has voted to protect Transportation Enhancements. As long as the attacks keep coming, we’ll keep fighting them. Thank you to the thousands of people who sent action alerts to your Senators. We need to keep reminding them that these are popular, critical, and beneficial transportation projects. So far, they’re hearing us. Now is a good time to thank them.

Here is how the Senators voted (courtesy of www.Senate.gov, hat-tip Eric Rogers):

Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

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.

Now, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is taking the lead in trying to destroy Transportation Enhancements.  On November 1, the Senate will finalize the transportation appropriations bill, which sets funding levels for FY2012.  Sen. Paul has offered an amendment to redirect all funding for Transportation Enhancements to bridge repair. Here’s why his arguments don’t make sense.

This is the third time in a month that a small group of Senators have targeted Transportation Enhancements, using a different angle each time.  It is a red herring, and a waste of the Senate’s time and taxpayers dollars to focus on this small and valuable program when we are in dire need of real and viable solutions to fix our failing transportation system.

We agree on the need to keep our bridges safe, but the lives of pedestrians and cyclists are important too.  That is why we believe Senator Paul should withdraw his amendment now and let the Senate EPW Committee, which has jurisdiction over writing the next transportation bill, do their job.  The Committee is actually scheduled to mark-up their bill on November, 9. That is the appropriate time to discuss changes to the overall transportation program, not during the appropriations process.

Click here to take action.

Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

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.

Hard on the heels of a failed move in the US Senate to strip transportation enhancement funding out of the transportation bill, opponents of the program are now trying a new tack: claiming that bridges are falling down because of the funds diverted to “bike paths” and other beautification projects. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has suggested that enhancement funds – the primary source of Federal funding for bicycling and walking infrastructure – be siphoned off to bridge repair, in part because one key Ohio River bridge in Kentucky is in need of repair and the state transportation agency “doesn’t have the money” to do the repairs.

If this sounds familiar, it is. You may remember some of the same rhetoric surfaced around the time of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, including a statement from then-Transportation Secretary Mary Peters that she later retracted. The arguments being used by Senator Paul don’t improve with age or re-telling and still make no sense. Here are a few of the reasons why:

• Safety: Thirteen people died when the Minneapolis bridge collapsed in 2007: since then, close to 20,000 pedestrians and 2,800 cyclists have died on our nation’s highways, largely as a result of poor highway design and an historic lack of safe non-motorized infrastructure – exactly what the enhancement program was created to fix. No bridges have collapsed since 2007.

• Fix it First: Between six and ten percent of Kentucky bridges are classified as “structurally deficient” – yet for every dollar Kentucky has spent in recent years on bridge repair, they have spent $6.50 building new roadway capacity; they spent 77% of their stimulus funds on new capacity rather than fixing existing bridges and roadways – the fourth worst record in the nation.

• Use it or Lose It: Kentucky isn’t even spending all the Federal transportation money they have already been given for bridges on bridges: in fact, earlier this year they sent $6.9 million of unspent bridge funds BACK TO WASHINGTON DC. They are not alone: nationwide, more than $534 million of unused bridge funds were sent back to Washington DC by state Departments of Transportation.

•  A Question of Scale: Kentucky has four massive bridge & highway projects in its “transportation improvement program” each one costing between $1.5bn and $4.1bn. The  transportation enhancement program for all 50 states is around $900m annually of which bike/ped projects are typically half. This means the entire nation’s primary source of bike and pedestrian program funding for the next 20 years would have to be diverted to rebuild four bridges in Kentucky…bridges that aren’t actually structurally deficient, they are “functionally obsolete”, which means they aren’t as big and wide as the highway lobby wants them to be.

Senator Paul should be a little more skeptical of the rhetoric of many of our state’s highway agencies when they plead poverty, warn of imminent bridge collapse, and complain about “their” funds being taken from them. In far too many cases, state departments of transportation are spending vast sums of public money on the wrong projects in the wrong places for all the wrong reasons. That’s one reason why they often struggle to get approval for projects that take so long to implement – they are still trying to build a 1950s-style highway system long after the sell-by date.

As his Senate colleagues were reminded just a couple of weeks ago, the enhancements program is popular, successful, heavily over-subscribed, and is creating the kind of infrastructure improvements and choices in communities that people want more of, not less.

Andy Clarke
League President

Clarke was appointed to the position of Executive Director in April of 2004 after successfully leading efforts to create, interpret and implement the various transportation programs that are available to improve conditions for bicycling and walking as the League’s State and Local Advocacy Director.

Click the picture to take action.

The good news is that we understand leaders of the House and Senate have agreed on a six-month “clean” extension of the current transportation programs that would preserve the transportation enhancements and other key funding programs for bicycling and walking infrastructure. That will give them six months to continue their work on writing a new transportation program for the longer term. We do not have to take action on the House side as we expect the House to pass it out.

The bad news is that Senator Coburn (R-OK) is still planning on introducing an amendment to strip the enhancements program from the otherwise clean extension. This is no idle threat. Two years ago a similar effort by Coburn was defeated by 59-39 and it’s a very different Congress today than it was in 2009. The additional reality is that if Coburn decides to pick this one issue on which to filibuster – and there’s every reason to believe he will – we will need not just a majority but a super majority of 60 Senators to vote to end a filibuster. That’s a real challenge on almost any issue these days.

So we need to take this threat seriously and contact our Senators today. The ask is pretty simple – “please support a clean extension to current transportation funding and please support continued dedicated funding for bicycling and walking programs in the next transportation authorization.” (Until we see the specific wording we won’t know whether we are asking for a vote for or against his amendment – last time the wording was such that a “no” vote was a vote “for” the enhancements programs.) Let’s send a strong and unmistakable message to Congress that investing in a smart, sustainable transportation system for the 21st century, one that offers choice and safety for all, includes dedicated funding for bicycling and walking.

Contact your Senator now!

The blog post from last week (read it for more details on the debate in Congress) went viral. We’ve sen an impressive response to the advocacy alert already. Thank you to all those would acted then. Please continue to spread the word to other supporters of bicycling and transportation options. Have you made the I Bike. I Vote. graphic your facebook picture yet?

Andy Clarke
League President

Clarke was appointed to the position of Executive Director in April of 2004 after successfully leading efforts to create, interpret and implement the various transportation programs that are available to improve conditions for bicycling and walking as the League’s State and Local Advocacy Director.

The student trying to get to school really doesn’t have a lot of options to riding the mile from home to school on the road – her neighborhood has no sidewalks; there aren’t any alternate routes; her mother can’t drive her; the police didn’t really help her with a solution; the school bus isn’t an option. Besides, riding is a good option – it’s quicker and healthier; the streets are pretty quiet; many ten-year olds are quite capable of riding in that environment; and her mom shouldn’t have to drive her (assuming she could)! The fact that she may not have been riding with all the traffic skills of a seasoned commuter cyclist speaks perhaps to the need for decent bike education in school, slightly more patient parents who are driving their kids to school, and – of course – a few more fellow riders and walkers out there with her who can easily access the school on foot and bike.

It’s not too much of a stretch to say that this case highlights the need for the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Program currently under threat of Congressional budget cuts. The SRTS program has enabled local communities to access badly needed funds to help build sidewalks and trails to schools; to add bike lanes, signs and markings on roads around schools; to deliver critical bicycling and traffic safety education to students; to support bike trains and walking school buses; and even to begin to tackle bigger issues of school siting and access. Clearly these things are not happening without the impetus of the SRTS program and it would be a huge mistake if Congress were to approve a transportation bill without this critical initiative.

If Congress does decide to axe the program, we can anticipate a lot more cases like we are seeing in Tennessee – we can’t afford school buses because of local budget cuts; we aren’t providing education and encouragement programs to teach kids traffic safety skills; we keep putting our schools in the wrong places where people can’t walk and bike easily to them; we don’t provide sidewalks, crosswalks, lanes, trails and other safe facilities to get them to school; and then we wonder why more and more increasingly overweight and irritable kids are being driven to school [by increasingly overweight and irritable parents] adding to the danger for kids who can’t be driven…and the police and school administrators are left to sort out the mess with their own preconceived notions of what’s “safe” and “normal” behavior that doesn’t seem to include hopping on a bike and riding for kids who are generally quite capable of doing so.

To speak up for Safe Routes to School, contact your members of Congress and ask them to support the program by signing on to this bill. You can also sign up to the advocacy center for alerts on the larger transportation bill – we are expecting to see some action on this when Congress returns next week and we are going to need all the help we can get to preserve dedicated funding for bicycling and walking programs.

Andy Clarke
League President

Clarke was appointed to the position of Executive Director in April of 2004 after successfully leading efforts to create, interpret and implement the various transportation programs that are available to improve conditions for bicycling and walking as the League’s State and Local Advocacy Director.

Meanwhile on the Senate side,  James Inhofe (R-OK), the lead Republican negotiator on the transportation bill, declared that one of his TOP THREE priorities for the transportation bill is to eliminate ‘frivolous spending for bike trails.’

The League and the America Bikes Coalition have launched a critical advocacy alert. Please contact your Members of Congress and tell them to reach out to Senators Inhofe, Boxer, and Congressman Mica to urge them to continue funding for Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School and Recreational Trails.

League President Andy Clarke blasted the draft bill in a press release today saying:

Whether the next transportation bill is $200 billion or $400 billion is frankly less important than what is done with that kind of investment. Mica’s ‘New Direction’ proposal in fact turns the clock back on decades of hard-fought progress towards a truly multi-modal transportation system that offers American’s real choices. Even with a ‘small’ bill, returning to a 1950′s highways-only mentality flies in the face of fiscal responsibility by guaranteeing more single occupant vehicle travel on ever more congested and dangerous highways that we can’t even afford to maintain, let alone build.

The League calls on Chairman Mica to reinstate dedicated funding for bicycling and walking in his bill. We also ask that the Senate resist the efforts of Senator Inhofe eliminate dedicated funding for bicycling and walking. In addition to being healthy activities, bicycling and walking are valid transportation options, with more than four billion bike trips made annually for trips to work, school, and tourism. Furthermore bicycling and walking projects have the potential to create 46 percent more jobs per million dollars spent than auto-only projects; and bicycling and walking are critical generators of economic activity in communities across this country. Now is the time to be investing in these modes, not cutting them off just as 20 years of investment is starting to bear fruit.

Please join us in this effort. Contact your Members of Congress today!

Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

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.

The League has been working to raise awareness of the dangers of distracted driving and support state laws to outlaw it. See our Advocacy Advance report on Distracted Driving. While the League focuses every day on cyclist education, distracted driving campaigns are important because they put the onus on drivers to do the right thing in keeping themselves and all road users safe. In that spirit, this month we are sending a mailing to ask members to support our work to do even more to stand up for cyclists and make motorists accountable.

The Bicycle Friendly State program evaluates motorist education programs and allows us to share best practices, create model driving test questions, and provide solid information to DMVs and driving instructors. We will continue to work with the Department of Transportation as well as pedestrian and motorcyclist groups and participate in the Decade of Action on Road Safety, which is being launched during Bike Month — and, of course, we will continue to spread the word about Distracted Driving. This story from Minnesota shows that distracted driving is still a major problem for cyclists.

We are telling motorists that sharing the road is a two-way street.

Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

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.

Originally introduced as HB 180, which failed to pass the Georgia House of Representatives, the 3 foot safe passing language was a late amendment to HB 101 the “Better Bicycling Bill”. In addition to the safe passing language, HB101 also cleans up Georgia state code in regard to bicycling by legalizing the use of recumbent bicycles, further defining bike lanes and updated equipment requirements.

Georgia cyclists should contact Governor Nathan Deal, and urge him to sign this important bill into law.

Jeff Peel
State and Local Advocacy Coordinator

Peel joined the League in March 2008 as a Program Specialist for the Bicycle Friendly Communities program. Peel has a BA in American Studies from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Thanks to Bike Maryland, the Washington Area Bicyclists Association (WABA), AAA Mid-Atlantic, bill author Delegate Luiz Simmons, Senate Judiciary Proceedings Committee Chair Brian Frosh and the hundreds of Maryland cyclists who took action in support of the bill, the governor is expected to sign the bill soon. Laws like this have been long sought by advocates in many states, so congratulations to Maryland for their success.

As Maryland advocates welcomed their good news, cyclists in New Mexico faced a setback. Despite passing both the state House and Senate with relative ease, Governor Martinez vetoed what would have been the country’s first statewide five-foot passing law. Such a law already exists within two cities in the state: Albuquerque and Los Alamos. Making it statewide would make for consistent application as cyclists and motorists travel throughout the state.

The League is disappointed the Governor chose to veto the bill that would have served as an good opportunity to educate motorists and cyclists about shared roadway safety, and would have provided another opportunity for state law enforcement to help protect cyclists.

On a related note, Angie Schmitt of the Streetsblog Network describes how Texas communities are now passing their own vulnerable road user laws in the wake of Governor Perry’s vetoing a statewide measure before it became law.

Jeff Peel
State and Local Advocacy Coordinator

Peel joined the League in March 2008 as a Program Specialist for the Bicycle Friendly Communities program. Peel has a BA in American Studies from the University of Southern Mississippi.