Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The League of American Bicyclists' annual bike friendly state rankings.

Congratulations are due to Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota; those four states took home top rankings this year in the League of American Bicyclists’ annual Bicycle Friendly States appraisal. The winners were announced this morning.

Washington has held the top position for six years running. But there were a few shake-ups further down the list.

Delaware was one of the main up-and-comers, jumping from number ten to number 5. The Bike League’s blog praised Governor Jack Markell, along with the state legislature and advocacy organizations.

“The benefits of biking are countless, and that’s why I’m proud to support dedicated federal funding for biking and walking infrastructure,” U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) told the Bike League.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, meanwhile, said his state is not satisfied with second place.

“An important part of making Colorado the healthiest state is encouraging people to be more active in their everyday routines,” Hickenlooper said. “We’re proud that our bicycle-friendly policies have skyrocketed Colorado’s rank up 20 places in just five years, and we are committed to being No. 1 in the near future.”

Among the other most-improved states were Illinois and Arizona.

Michael Sanders, the Arizona Department of Transportation bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, said his state has been studying bike collisions and developing ways to reduce them.

These testimonies from high-ranking political officials prove how effective the Bicycle Friendly State program is at incentivizing a little good-natured competition to make cycling easier, safer, and more convenient for everyone. 

Here’s a preview of the top 15:

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Shown in red are some of the arterial roads the Oregon Department of Transportation thinks will need to be upgraded to comply with MAP-21. Photo: Bike Portland

An obscure provision of the new federal transportation bill is sparking concerns that it could erode walkability and bikeability in communities around the country. The so-called “Enhanced National Highway System” provision would require all major arterial roads to be folded into the national highway system. That could provide greater pressure for local entities to comply with AASHTO’s often highway-inspired standards, like wide lanes and shoulders that encourage car capacity at the expense of pedestrian safety.

The provision will result in a near doubling of the number of roads that will be part of the national highway system. But what will it mean for livable streets? There are lots of different opinions out there.

Jonathan Maus, at Bike Portland, who broke this story, said:

The significance of these roadways becoming part of the National Highway System is that if PBOT engineers want to make any changes that deviate from FHWA design standards for “principal arterials”, they would have to go through a cumbersome process of applying for exceptions.

In the words of a source at ODOT, “this designation basically forces state and local governments to treat arterials like major highways… Speed will increase, certain designs, like bulb outs, won’t be allowed without an exception. So on and so on.”

Travis Brouwer, senior federal affairs adviser for the Oregon Department of Transportation, echoed those concerns to some extent. Brouwer said the state was racing to reclassify its major arterials, up to 600 miles of road, by October 1, when the new law goes into effect.

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Rep. Earl Blumenauer likes to say that Oregon was the first state to adopt a gas tax and it will be the first state to get rid of it. In 2006-2007, the state conducted a pilot study of alternative revenue collection methods, with an eye toward moving to a better system. This fall, they’ll do another pilot, fine-tuning their process for replacing the gas tax with a vehicle-miles-traveled fee.

Oregon's VMT fee can be collected through odometer readings, but the system works best if people use more high-tech means of tracking miles driven. Photo: Fun with Num3ers

A legislature-appointed task force looked into two dozen methods of funding transportation and settled on VMT as the best one. With electric cars and hybrids growing in popularity, especially in eco-minded Oregon, tax collections at the pump don’t bring in enough to maintain the state’s transportation infrastructure.

During the first pilot, people raised some familiar concerns about privacy. They didn’t like having a government-installed GPS receiver in their car, tracking their movements. As it turns out, a lot of the resistance can be overcome if people can choose their own technology from the marketplace. They can just use their own smart phone, GPS unit, or OnStar device. After all, we’re already wired to the teeth with technology that tracks our every move. We just need to let those devices calculate the miles we drive.

“The government will not be a provider of devices,” said James Whitty, who manages Oregon DOT’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding. “We just won’t be. We can’t be. It stops the discussion of this. People don’t want the government to have anything to do with providing their technologies.”

Oregon DOT found that people were also more comfortable letting the private sector collect the data and process the payments.

While some would prefer a VMT fee based solely on odometer readings, that wouldn’t allow for dynamic pricing based on congestion and other conditions. But more importantly, especially when we’re talking about state tax collection, it doesn’t differentiate between miles driven in the state of Oregon, for which the driver owes taxes to Oregon, versus miles driven in Washington or California or Idaho.

Ironically, the people most vehement in their opposition to government tracking will have to deal with the government the most. For those who reject the technological approach — even with devices of their own choosing, and even with no transmitter of information out of the device – the state has been forced to come up with other options. But since they don’t involve private-sector technology, they won’t involve private-sector accounting, either.

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