The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

Silly Cyclists — Bikes Are for Kids

That seems like the attitude of congressional Republicans:

Fresh out of subcommittee, a new congressional transportation appropriations bill will entirely eliminate some $600 million worth of annual federal funding for bike paths, walkways and other such transportation niceties in fiscal year 2004.

What a joke. We're talking about $600 million for the whole country. Georgia wanted four times that much for a 59-mile tollway to nowhere in particular.

Defenders of the bill argue that, in light of huge federal deficits, something has to go ... [but] under the new bill, which the full Committee on Appropriations is likely to consider this week, before it goes to the House floor for a vote, highways would receive $34.1 billion in fiscal year 2004, which is $2.5 billion more than this year, while the Transportation Enhancements program that funds bike paths and walkways would get nothing. The bill would also significantly reduce funding for everything from Amtrak to reverse-commute transportation programs that connect low-income urban workers to jobs in the suburbs.

Right — because something has to go. It's just a coincidence that the "something" getting chucked happens to include just about every type of program perceived to typically appeal to Democratic voters.

[T]he bill puts $4.8 billion more into highway projects than President Bush asked for in his 2004 budget.

Oh. What was that about something having to go?

Micah Swafford, press secretary for Rep. Ernest J. Istook, R.-Okla., who chairs the subcommittee that wrote the bill, argues that, with the prospect of a $455 billion federal budget deficit and anticipating declining revenues in the highway taxes that fund transportation programs, the committee had to cut something.

"It's more important to provide the basic funding for roads, before you provide money for enhancements whenever you're facing a shortfall," Swafford says, citing Department of Transportation statistics that there are 6,476 structurally deficient bridges on the national highway system as one of the reasons that highways were the subcommittee's priority.

He's calling a sidewalk an "enhancement"? Or a subway? Or a bike path? When I lived in Chicago, those were the best ways to get around! Another thing to point out is how little water the "structurally deficient bridges" argument holds — I can point to places around here in Atlanta, and in suburbs all over the country, with structurally deficient sidewalks — structurally deficient because the sidewalk doesn't exist. Instead of a safe path, you see a well-worn dirt trail where people stay just a whisker away from traffic while they walk home from the bus stop. That might be the reason why Atlanta has one of the worst pedestrian death rates in the nation.

But something had to go. Sorry, pedestrians!

Posted by Greg Greene at July 24, 2003 3:03 PM