The Blog is Back – League Responds to Attacks on Bike Funding

After a long hiatus, the League of American Bicyclists’ blog is back. As before, the blog will feature contributions from the whole staff. Unlike before, the League now has two policy analysts to keep the blog up to date on the lasted national and notable regional bicycle news, policy and politics.

In fact, now is a good time to re-introduce the blog to the world since we’ve been busy responding to a report by Senators Tom Coburn and John McCain criticizing non-highway and -bridge projects in the transportation bill. First, we posted an update to the Trash Talking page of our website. Our position was then reported in an article in the subscription-only online publication, GreenWire:

Biking advocates say the senators’ accusations that bike and pedestrian projects have depleted the fund are baseless, considering how little the government has spent on them over the years.

Flusche said data from the same GAO study show that the government has spent less on bicycle and pedestrian projects over the past 18 years than the $7 billion Congress approved last week to patch up the highway fund.

“These modes of transportation are actually underfunded in proportion to how we use them,” Flusche said, suggesting that lawmakers look for better ways to finance the fund.

The story was picked up by BikePortland.

As the debate over the re-authorization of the transportation bill continues, we are likely to hear more spurious attacks on bicycle and pedestrian funding. We will cover them and the arguments in favor in this space, as well as many other topics.