Federal stimulus bills includes $1.3 billion for bike/ped

With a very large economic stimulus package under discussion in Congress, congressional leaders promising a large portion of that to go towards transportation, and President Obama promising a new direction in his administration to tackles problems of global warming and dependence on foreign sources of fuel, here is our question:

Do any of the stimulus proposals include anything that might change the game for bicycling and walking in the U.S.?

Why?
We know that bicycling and walking make up less than 5% of trips in Missouri, 10% of trips in the U.S. and up to 20-30% of trips in industrialized countries where a real effort has been made to make bicycling and walking safe, easy, and convenient.

In short, bicycling and walking could be a much larger portion of the transportation picture in the United States.

If it were, we would have lower emissions, lower pollution, lower congestion, lower reliance on foreign sources of energy, and better health.

Our goal in Missouri is to double the amount of bicycling and walking, bringing us up to the national average. The Federal Highway Administration has a goal to reach 15% of trips by bicycling and walking in the U.S.

We also know that building bicycling and walking facilities is one of the most cost-effective ways of tackling the transportation problem. For instance, Portland has spent about 1.5% of its budget on bicycling since 1990, and now has over 6% of trips by bicycling. This is a typical result when municipalities, metro areas, cities, and even countries decide to put more emphasis on bicycling and walking.

What's in the proposed stimulus bills?
According to a report by the Legislative Services Group's Transportation Weekly, about 4.5% of the amount set aside for transportation in both drafts of the legislation released from house committees so far, will be distributed as transportation enhancements (TE) grants.

That comes out to about $1.3 billion nationwide and about $30 million for Missouri. In round numbers, that's about equal to getting two extra years of TE funding for Missouri all at once.

In most states, most of the transportation enhancements money is used for bicycle and pedestrian projects--in Missouri, about 2/3 of Enhancements funding is used for bicycle or pedestrian related projects.

What's next?
Assuming the transportation and Enhancements funding goes through Congress as is, the next issue will be, how will the Missouri portion of the Transportation Enhancements funding be spent?

The good news is that there are already Transportation Enhancements committees in MoDOT Districts and metropolitan areas across Missouri. These committees have experience and expertise in awarding Transportation Enhancements grants in their parts of the state.

They have good connections with cities and agencies who may be interested in building these projects and they also typically have a backlog of projects from previous rounds of funding that are good projects but were simply below the cutoff line of available funds in previous funding rounds.

If MoDOT uses this existing structure of Enhancements committees around the state to distribute the funds, then it is likely the funds will be spend reasonably well in Missouri.

(One of MoBikeFed's goals is to gradually work for better, more efficient, effective, and strategic spending of Transportation Enhancement and other similar funds. Nevertheless there is no question that working to gradually improve the existing system, rather than discarding it and going with a new ad-hoc system, is by far the better strategy.)

What do you think about including funding for bicycling, walking, and other transportation alternatives in the economic stimulus bill? Is it a good idea or a bad one? Is the amount they are proposing to spend too high or too low?

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below . . .