President-elect Barack Obama and the newly elected Congress have pledged to pass an economic stimulus package early next year that includes a significant "green" component. Bloomberg reports:
"Clean energy is going to be a foundation for rebuilding the American economy," said Bracken Hendricks, an analyst at the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress and an adviser to the presidential-transition team. Generating jobs in concert with cutting pollution will be "a major component" of any economic-recovery plan, Hendricks said.
In light of that, here is MoBikeFed's preliminary analysis of the "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects proposed by MoDOT for the economic stimulus plan:
MoDOT is proposing $800 million in road, rail, pedestrian, transit, and airport projects, of which $510 could be awarded within 180 days.
Percentage of funds proposed for:
Roads: 94.4%
Transit: 3.0%
Rail: 1.4%
Aviation: 0.8%
Pedestrian: 0.5%
Bicycle: 0.0%
Road projects: are they for maintenance or expansion:
Maintenance 52.9%
Expansion 47.1%
Road projects: Do they include any level of bicycle accommodation?
Includes shoulder - 2.6%Includes shoulder or other facility usable by bicyclists
No accommodation - 7%Definitely should include shoulder, bicycle lane, or separated path but definitely does not
Unknown - 50.0%Based on location and project type, this type of project should include bicycle accommodation but no indication of whether it is included; in most cases probably not
Interstate freeway - 44.7%Interstate freeway or other location where bicycle accommodation is generally not needed (although many freeway projects will include replacing overpasses of routes or streets that cross the freeway; almost all of these should include bicycle and/or pedestrian accommodation but no indication is given of how they will actually be handled)
