New Mass. Pedestrian Safety Plan Includes Snow Removal
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If states stop ignoring pedestrians, and get serious about protecting them — like Massachusetts has proposed — enormous resources would be available to improve safety.
Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Transportation Enhancements
Brace Yourself: Here Comes Another Attack on Bike/Ped Funding
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If petty Congressional attacks on bike/ped funding were a drinking game, you’d be drunk by now. And now two House Republicans want to pour you another shot. Reps. Sam Johnson (TX) and Vicky Hartzler (MO) have introduced a bill to eliminate the Transportation Alternatives Program, the largest source of federal funding for biking and walking projects. TAP is today’s curtailed […]
UPDATE: Here We Go Again: Sen. Rand Paul Pits Bikes Against Bridges
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Rand Paul is at it again. Last year, Sen. Paul (R-KY) made a laughingstock of himself by alleging that the Transportation Enhancements program — which largely funds bicycle and pedestrian improvements — was used for things like “turtle tunnels and squirrel sanctuaries and all this craziness.” His statements had no basis in fact, but that […]
How Highway Spending Could Become as Transparent as Bike/Ped Spending
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“There’s an inverse proportion of the size of a transportation program to the amount of transparency,” says Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council. While anyone can easily find in granular detail anything they would ever want to know about where bike/ped money goes, and they can get a pretty good idea of what’s going […]
The Awful Truth About the Transpo Bill’s Bike/Ped Loophole
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In the immediate, panicked moments after the MAP-21 conference report was released, I missed some of the nuances of just how bad a deal this bill is for bike policy. Three things stand out: States can use their Transportation Alternatives (TA) money on anything they want. Bike/ped programs are facing anywhere from a 33 percent […]
States Already Licking Their Chops Over Newly “Flexible” Bike/Ped Funds
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Just days after Congress passed a bill allowing states to spend funds supposedly designated for biking and walking on completely unrelated projects, transportation officials are already circling like vultures over that money. An AP story from Covington, Kentucky on Sunday quotes several transportation officials and executives parroting the GOP line that transportation enhancements funding, as that […]