Advocacy Alert: Bill to support biking, walking in small and underserved communities introduced in Congress

The League of American Bicyclists released this advocacy alert yesterday:

Last year, the League and Sierra Club released a report - "The New Majority: Pedaling Toward Equity" - that highlighted the prevailing disparities in safe biking and walking in low-income and communities of color nationwide.

Now, a bi-partisan bill in Congress, introduced by Rep. Albio Sires (D-NJ), would take steps to advance equity for bicyclists and pedestrians, and boost funding for bike/ped projects low-income communities.

Take action now - tell your member of Congress to support H.R. 3978!

The New Opportunities for Bicycle and Pedestrian Infrastructure Financing Act of 2014 (NOBPIFA) will allow communities to take advantage of low-cost financing for projects that make streets and sidewalks safer for all users through a new federal credit assistance program that would direct millions specifically for low-income communities.

This innovative bill:

1. Creates a low-interest long-term loan program for communities to build biking and walking networks. 
2. 25% of the funding must be spent in low income communities
3. The funding, $11 million, is a set aside from the $1 billion dollar TIFIA loan program funded in MAP-21.
4. Offers a new tool for Mayors and local governments to finance needed transportation infrastructure.
5. And doesn't add any new costs to the transportation bill, or to the federal budget.

If you believe bicycling should be safe for everyone, tell your Representative to support H.R. 3978 today!

Click here to send your message to Congress.

Streetsblog has some more details:

Sires’ bill, the New Opportunities for Bicycle and Pedestrian Infrastructure Financing Act — NOBPIFA for short (if you call that short) — would set aside 1 percent of TIFIA’s $1 billion and earmark that money for biking and walking. For these projects, TIFIA’s minimum project cost would be lowered to $2 million, making low-interest, long-term loans available to communities for improvements to their biking and walking networks.

Three co-sponsors have signed on to the bill. Two of them, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, are Republicans from the Miami area. Florida is consistently ranked as one of the most dangerous states in the country for walking and biking. . . . 

In his press release, Sires spotlighted a report on equity issues put out by the League of American Bicyclists and the Sierra Club, which showed that Latinos and African-Americans are disproportionately killed on bicycles. Despite the misperception in many circles that cycling is for rich white people, the League also reports that people earning less than $30,000 a year accounted for 28 percent of bike trips in 2009.

“This bi-partisan bill creates an incentive for local governments to target smart transportation investment in areas that need it most, where transportation costs are typically 30 percent or more of household budgets, and where good transportation options are limited,” said League President Andy Clarke. He added that Rep. Sires’ initiative “enables communities to turn back the clock on decades of under-investment in the most basic of transportation solutions.”

Comments on the Streetsblog article indicate that this is a pilot program and the TIFIA program tends to leverage far more money that it provides itself--meaning that this a program with far more impact than its $11 million budget would indicate.

This is one of the bills that Missouri's delegation to the 2014 National Bike Summit in Washington, DC, will be working on when we are visiting our members of Congress during the first week of March.

Working for a world-class bicycle and pedestrian transportation system is one of the four primary objectives in MoBikeFed's Vision for Bicycling and Walking in Missouri.  Working in cooperation with other groups with similar aims, like the League of American Bicyclists, is one way we can achieve the "Creating a Movement" objective in our Vision--because working together we are much stronger than when we go it alone. Your membership and support makes our Vision become reality!