Say NO to Senate Recreational Trails Program Full Funding Act

Last week, senators introduced a bill that would siphon funding away from bike lane projects to instead fund off-road recreational trails projects, including all-terrain vehicle trails. 

This is not how we make biking safer for everyone. 

While the League supports increased funding for the recreational trails program, we cannot support those increases at the expense of other biking and walking programs. 

The RTP Full Funding Act would specifically require funding to come out of the Transportation Alternatives Program, which funds bike lanes and sidewalks, and bars the funding from coming from other sources (last paragraph). There are other options to increase funding for Rec Trails without lowering the available funding for biking and walking TAP projects, but this bill isn’t it. 

The Transportation Alternatives program is the number one source of biking and walking funds, responsible for roughly 50 percent of all federal funding that goes to bicycling and walking. It can fund bike lanes, sidewalks, trails, crosswalks — any form of bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure, including recreational trails.  Local governments apply for what is most important to their communities. 

Currently, about 6 percent of TAP is used to fund the Recreational Trails Program which supports motorized and non-motorized off-road trails (and 30-70 percent of Recreational Trails funding goes to motorized uses). Under the Senate bill, Rec Trails would become 20 percent of TAP. This table shows what percent of TAP will be reserved for Rec Trails within your state. 

Where did this bill come from? 

Off-road motorized vehicles pay gas taxes when filling up their ATVs and snowmobiles, and a 2021 study by the Treasury Department found that motorized vehicles’ gas tax accounted for $281 million a year. Therefore off-road interest groups want the full $281 million to be spent on off-road trails. 

This “user-pay should equal user- benefit” argument being used to promote this bill is the same argument Project 2025 is using to argue that NO federal funds should go towards biking and walking because bike lanes and sidewalks don’t generate gas tax. 

If we allow Congress to buy into the argument that infrastructure should only be built for the mode that paid for them, we concede the argument that biking and walking infrastructure doesn’t deserve federal investment.

I want to reiterate that the League of American Bicyclists supports funding for Recreational Trails. But this bill, and the rhetoric behind it, does more harm than good. It undermines both the main funding source for bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure and it uses rhetoric that threatens the eligibility of bike infrastructure for ANY federal funding.