Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Are you ready to be inspired?

Well, good, because the American Association of State Highway and Transportation just released its list of finalists for the “America’s Transportation Award” Grand Prize. These ten projects span every sector of the transportation world, from enormous highway projects to … less enormous highway projects and highway bridges.

Maryland's Intercounty Connector, built "for 20 years of future sprawl," is an AASHTO favorite. Photo: dougtone/Flickr via GGW

Voting is open through October 19. Who will win the top prize?

One candidate is Maryland’s $2.4 billion Intercounty Connector, a “19-mile multimodal highway.” This road was “designed for 20 years of future sprawl,” wrote Greater Greater Washington, and today its wide asphalt expanses are a testament to how little the region needed this project to be built. Here’s an actual headline from a local radio station: “Why does ICC seem so empty?“

Then there’s California DOT, a.k.a. Caltrans, which was nominated for its $5 million “carmageddon” communications campaign. It saved Los Angeles from complete meltdown when one portion of I-405 was closed last summer. Either that or the short-term closure of a single highway isn’t the end of the world after all.

Another highway AASHTO honors is the I-270 project in St. Louis, which “redesigned and reconstructed” three roadway projects and came in under budget. The goal of this project? To reduce congestion. Never mind that the Texas Transportation Institute ranks St. Louis third from last in congestion, or that as the scourge of congestion has been systematically eliminated in this city, people have actually spent more time behind the wheel.

Not a single transit, bike or pedestrian project makes AASHTO’s list. Is there any better indication that the majority of America’s state DOTs still view job number one as building highways?

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The MAP-21 transportation bill in many ways made it tougher for cities and towns to provide safer streets for walking and biking. Projects to build bike lanes and sidewalks now have to compete harder for the tiny bit of funding they’re eligible for. And right now, states are deciding whether or not to “opt out” of the Recreational Trails Program (RTP). Instead of spending RTP money on bicycle and pedestrian trails — both urban and rural — states can “opt” to spend it on something else.

Even rail-trail-hating Gov. Sam Brownback says Kansas will use their Recreational Trails funding. Will he make the same promise of other bike/ped funds? Photo: Pitch

But the fact is that RTP made it out of the conference process more intact than some of its sister bike/ped programs. It kept its “dedicated” funding, although that dedication is awfully porous. Then again, it always has been.

MAP-21 put the Recreational Trails Program under the umbrella of the larger Transportation Alternatives program, but RTP retained $85 million of its own funding, with each state getting the same amount they were apportioned in 2009. While Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School lost their dedicated funds, RTP kept its money because it comes from a different source: a gas tax on off-road vehicles.

That unique funding source has more or less safeguarded a program that’s focused on recreation — albeit with many important urban connectors under its belt — while throwing more transportation-oriented programs under the proverbial bus.

RTP got off relatively scot-free in what was a bruising bill process for other bike/ped programs. “What can I say?” said Marianne Fowler, senior vice president of federal relations at the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. “We’re really happy.” She also added that recreational trails built from this fund have another benefit: They’re not treated as federal-aid highways, since the facilities aren’t roadways. That means they don’t need to comply with the same onerous project reviews and contracting processes. Unfortunately, Safe Routes to School hasn’t had the same luck, meaning simple crosswalk projects can sometimes get tangled up in red tape.

All isn’t rosy with RTP, though. Governors can opt out of the program, meaning the money would go back into their total amount for Transportation Alternatives (which can then be squandered on road-building or anything else they like).

It used to be that there was only a “back door” opt-out, according to RTC’s Fowler. That back door is still open, but there’s a “front door” now too.

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One reason why Congress may be so willing to eliminate dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs is the persistent notion that biking and walking are limited to cities, and therefore of no concern to rural legislators. Setting aside for a moment the arguments supporting a federal interest in urban transportation, the notion that nobody bikes or walks in rural areas is outright false, as amply demonstrated in a new report from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy report features a photo of Northville, Michigan (Pop: 6,063). Image: RTC

Yes, it may be true that “rural biking and walking rates are lower than national biking and walking rates,” said report contributor Tracy Hadden Loh, “but it’s not that much lower — and it’s not zero.”

The report, “Active Transportation Beyond Urban Centers,” shows that in large and small “rural cores” of 2,500 to 50,000 residents, the share of total trips made on foot or by bike is only 20 percent below the rate for larger urban cores. Furthermore, when it comes to work trips, rural areas fall right in line with the national rates of biking and walking to work.

Other surveys highlighted by the report show that rural residents rank pedestrian friendliness as being more important than major roads or long-distance transportation.

Rural communities do not often have the resources to amass and analyze data like the kind in RTC’s report, Hadden Loh explained. They may think biking and walking is a coastal, urban, New York/San Francisco thing, “but they don’t understand how much they have already.”

Excerpt of a letter sent to Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) by three Pennsylvania state legislators, opposing federal support for rural sidewalks. Image: RTC

The misconception endures, said Hadden Loh, because of unfamiliarity. Although 80 percent of the nation’s counties are designated “rural” by U.S. DOT, they account for only 20 percent of the nation’s population. The result is a lack of awareness, not only on the part of policymakers unfamiliar with their own constituencies, but on the part of rural communities themselves who buy into the myth as well. “Some of the politicians most opposed to [bike/ped] programs represent the communities who benefit the most from programs like Transportation Enhancements,” said Kevin Mills, RTC’s Vice President of Policy.

Besides compiling numerical data on rural transportation, the report also includes testimonials from rural communities across the country, demonstrating the benefits of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

Obviously, there are more stories out there than could possibly fit in the report, but RTC has launched an interactive mapping website that displays additional stories as well as illustrates the data in the report. There’s also an opportunity for users to submit their own stories.

And the stories are not just for the benefit of policymakers in need of an education, Hadden Loh said. “There are other people like you doing your bike/ped work in other rural areas. We want to help those rural areas connect with each other.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood became a darling of the bicycling advocacy community last year when he jumped up on a table at the National Bike Summit and affirmed his support for biking, later declaring “the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”

LaHood's tabletop speech to cyclists, March 2010. Photo: J. Maus / Bike Portland

Now LaHood says that biking and walking is not only good transportation policy; it’s good health care policy.

Speaking at the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s 25th anniversary reception last weekend, LaHood said the rail-trail program “has done more for health care than anything we’ve ever done in America. Rail-trails have contributed so much to people’s good health over the last 25 years — also preventing heart disease, and providing the kinds of opportunities people have looked for, for a long, long time.”

City health departments are getting on board with active transportation, with many health officials promoting biking and walking as a path to good health. Perhaps the innovative partnership between USDOT, EPA, and HUD should make room for Health and Human Services too?

We’ll bring you more of the LaHood-bicycle-lovefest tomorrow, when the secretary publicly endorses the NACTO bike guide, the most bicycle-friendly street-planning guide out there for engineers.

Bet you weren’t expecting to hear any good news from the floor of the House today, were you? Turns out not everyone in Congress is as axe-happy as some high-profile Republicans. For example, Amtrak survived one attempt to cut all its funding and another to cut $447 million. (Amtrak funding does stand to lose $224 million in cuts already included in HR 1, the budget bill for the rest of FY2011.)

A bike/ped trail in Binghamton, NY funded by the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

Over the weekend, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy sent out a pre-emptive action alert, afraid that any spending-cut frenzy would inevitably end up targeting the always vulnerable “transportation enhancements” program that funds bike/ped projects. RTC feared Safe Routes to School and other trail funding would lose out too.

“We knew there was going to be this open amendment process with hundreds of amendments flying around,” said RTC’s policy VP Kevin Mills. “And with some people critical of these core programs, we were on alert.”

You can take your hands off your eyes now – it’s not as bad as they feared.

No amendment directly targeted the transportation enhancements program. An amendment that would cut funding for the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund, which funds some trails, was defeated by a “nail-biting” 213-216 vote, with 32 Republicans voting against the cuts.

It’s not all good news, of course. The House has passed lots of Republican amendments to cut even deeper than the proposed bill allowed, while restricting Democratic amendments to restore funding by insisting that any funding added back in had to be taken out somewhere else.

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In July of last year, when AAA launched their roadside bicycle repair service, cyclists got a warm fuzzy feeling for a minute and thought AAA was about as bike-friendly as an automobile organization could be. That bubble burst in July when AAA Mid-Atlantic President and CEO Don Gagnon editorialized that highway trust fund money should be reserved just for highways [PDF].

This trail goes right past the AAA HQ in Heathrow, Florida. Bike/ped advocates say AAA is trying to take dedicated funding away from trails. Image: American Trails

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy shot back:

“Highway Trust Fund” is a misleading name dating to the 1950s and the founding of the Interstate system. It is a transportation trust fund that has supported transit for 40 years and trails, bicycling and walking for nearly 20 years.

Since September, RTC President Keith Laughlin has engaged in correspondence with AAA representatives, asking them to change their position. AAA insists they’re not trying to de-fund bike programs – they just think those programs should be funded through general revenues, not the trust fund. “That’s like, after 20 years of stellar job performance in a highly specialized field with scant job prospects, your boss fires you but says he hopes you find another job somewhere else,” says RTC.

This morning, Rails-to-Trails staff and members took their message directly to AAA headquarters in Florida (in the Congressional district represented by incoming Transportation Committee Chair John Mica.) They rode there on the federally-funded Seminole Wekiva Trail—“a trail in AAA’s front yard that, ironically, was developed using the same funding programs AAA would eliminate”— to hand-deliver petitions with 51,377 signatures. Two-thirds of the signatures were from AAA members.

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Earlier this month, we reported that Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) was in the running for Ranking Member on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in the House. We mentioned our alarm that his ideas about transportation seemed limited and road-centric – specifically, that his website’s issue page on Transportation mentioned only highways, water, and broadband. Got us wondering what he thought about bike-ped access and transit.

The Greenbrier River Trail, the longest rail-trail in West Virginia. Looks beautiful, but we're guessing it's not a high-traffic commuter corridor. Photo by shbknits

We were glad to see today that reporter Taylor Kuykendall from the local Register-Herald newspaper asked Rahall about those omissions.

Rahall said he understands those concerns, and admits they aren’t featured prominently on his website, but that doesn’t mean he ignores those issues.

“I don’t give them much play on my website, because while important, they don’t play as prominent a role in the way we move our coal, our goods and our people,” Rahall said. “We don’t benefit as much in West Virginia from all of those categories, but we do have some. Rails-to-trails, for example, and we have bikeways and scenic byways. We have several of those right here in southern West Virginia.”

Now, I like a scenic byway as much as the next lady, but it’s not quite the trailblazing reform that advocates were looking for.

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