[sustran] Re: Fw: Bicycles are not a form of transportation

[Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory]

Hi Lee,

It means that when you go to those meeting you should wear lycra, 
cycling shoes, expensive sunglasses, etc... to make a statement that 
cycling is only "sport"...

- T

Lee Schipper wrote:
> Does this mean i can no longer cycle to meetings at DOT?
>
>   
>>>> "Lloyd Wright" <lwright at vivacities.org> 09/17/07 2:39 PM >>>
>>>>         
>
> Interesting article on how the Bush administration does not consider the
> bicycle to be a form of transporation...
>
>
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20819827
>
>
> The bicycle thief
>
>
> Bike activists face an uphill climb against Transportation Secretary
> Mary Peters, who claims bike paths are not transportation and are
> stealing tax money from bridges and roads.
>
> By Katharine Mieszkowski
>
>   <http://images.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/14/bike_paths/story.jpg>
>
>
>
> Photo: AP/Wide World
>
> Salon composite of Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters.
>
> Sept. 14, 2007 | Imagine you're the federal official in the Bush
> administration charged with overseeing the nation's transportation
> infrastructure. A major bridge collapses on an interstate highway during
> rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring an additional 100. Whom to
> blame? How about the nation's bicyclists and pedestrians! 
>
> The Minneapolis bridge collapse on Aug. 1 led Secretary of
> Transportation Mary Peters to publicly reflect on federal transportation
> spending priorities and conclude that those greedy bicyclists and
> pedestrians, not to mention museumgoers and historic preservationists,
> hog too much of the billions of federal dollars raised by the gas
> <http://dir.salon.com/topics/taxes/> tax, money that should go to pave
> highways and bridges. Better still, Peters, a 2006 Bush appointee,
> apparently doesn't see biking and walking paths as part of
> <http://dir.salon.com/topics/transportation/> transportation
> infrastructure at all. 
>
> In an Aug. 15
> <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/transportation/july-dec07/infrastructure
> _08-15.html> appearance on PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," Peters
> spoke against a proposal to raise gas taxes to shore up the nation's
> aging infrastructure. The real problem, the secretary argued, is that
> only 60 percent of the current money raised by gas taxes goes to
> highways and bridges. She conveniently neglected to mention that about
> 30 percent of the money goes to public transit. She then went on to
> blast congressional earmarks, which dedicate 10 percent of the gas tax
> to some 6,000 other projects around the country. "There are museums that
> are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing
> lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is
> being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure," she said. The
> secretary added that projects like bike paths and trails "are really not
> transportation." 
>
> Peters' comments set off an eruption of blogging, e-mailing and
> letter-writing among bike riders and activists, incensed that no matter
> how many times they burn calories instead of fossil fuels with the words
> "One Less Car" or "We're Not Holding Up the Traffic, We Are the Traffic"
> plastered on their helmets, their pedal pushing is not taken seriously
> as a form of transportation by the honchos in Washington, D.C. 
>
> Bike paths are not infrastructure? "There are hundreds of thousands of
> people who ride to work, and millions who walk to work every day, and
> the idea [that] that isn't transportation is ludicrous," says Andy
> Clarke, executive director of the  <http://www.bikeleague.org/> League
> of American Bicyclists, who has biked to work for almost 20 years on a
> path paid for with federal dollars. Clarke fired off an angry letter to
> Peters, and invited the 25,000 members of his organization around the
> country to do the same. "The guy in his Humvee taking his videos back to
> the video store isn't any more legitimate a trip than the guy on the
> Raleigh taking his videos back," says Andy Thornley, program director
> for the  <http://www.sfbike.org/> San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. 
>
> In fact, only about 1.5 percent of federal transportation dollars go to
> fund bike paths and walking trails. In the meantime, 10 percent of all
> U.S. trips to work, school and the store occur on bike or foot, and
> bicyclists and pedestrians account for about 12 percent of annual
> traffic fatalities, according to the Federal Highway Administration. "We
> represent a disproportionate share of the injuries, and we get a
> minuscule share of the funds," says Robert Raburn, executive director of
> the  <http://www.ebbc.org/> East Bay Bike Coalition in the San Francisco
> Bay Area, who calls the Peters' comments "outrageous." Plus, he notes,
> with problems like  <http://dir.salon.com/topics/global_warming/> global
> warming, the  <http://dir.salon.com/topics/obesity/> obesity epidemic
> and energy independence, shouldn't the U.S. secretary of transportation
> be praising biking, not complaining about it? 
>
> What really drives cyclists around the bend is that while they're doing
> their part to burn less fossil fuel -- cue slogan: "No Iraqis Died to
> Fuel This Bike" -- they're getting grief for being expensive from a
> profligate administration. "War spending, tax cuts for the rich, and gas
> taxes are all big sources of funding. Bike spending is not," fumes
> <http://bicycleaustin.info/> Michael Bluejay, an Austin, Texas, bike
> activist, in an e-mail. "The few pennies we toss toward bike projects is
> not enough to fix our nation's bridges, not by a freaking long shot." 
>
> One of the many communities that benefit from federal dollars for
> bicyclists and pedestrians is the very one where the bridge collapsed.
> For the St. Paul, Minn., program
> <http://www.tlcminnesota.org/Resources/Newsletters/May%202007/bwtcupdate
> .html> Bike/Walk Twin Cities, administered by
> <http://www.tlcminnesota.org/> Transit for Livable Communities, $21.5
> million of federal dough is being spent to create bike lanes, connect
> existing walking and biking trails with one another, and install signage
> to alert drivers of the presence of bicyclists and walkers. Despite the
> cold winters, Minneapolis is something of a biking Mecca, with 2.4
> percent of all trips to work made by bike, significantly higher than the
> national average of 0.4 percent, according to Joan Pasiuk, program
> director of Bike/Walk Twin Cities. 
>
> It's hard to argue that walking paths and bike trails are robbing
> federal coffers when states can't even spend all the federal money
> they've received to repair bridges in the first place. In 2006, state
> departments of transportation sent back $1 billion in unspent bridge
> funds to the federal government, according to the
> <http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/rescissions/pl110_5/summary.htm> Federal
> Highway Administration. "The fact that there is a billion dollars of
> bridge repair money sloshing around in the system not being spent
> suggests that it's not the fault of bike trails," says Clarke. 
>
> Congressional Democrats agree. "It's a red herring to point to bike
> paths and even imply that if we didn't build another bike path we'd have
> all the money we need to fix our highways and bridges," says Jim Berard,
> communications director for the House Committee on Transportation and
> Infrastructure. "You can't build very many bridges with the amount of
> money that you would save if you didn't build any bike paths." 
>
> So why is Peters suddenly taking on bikes and pedestrians? Her comments
> are especially odd since she sang the praises of bikes as transportation
> in a  <http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pressroom/re020306.htm> speech at the
> National Bike Summit in Washington, in March 2002. Has she simply
> forgotten the glory of two wheels? One theory: Peters is on a campaign
> to quash the idea of raising the gas tax, as she editorialized recently
> in the
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR20070
> 82401697.html> Washington Post. A key proponent of raising the gas tax
> to fund bridge restorations in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge
> collapse is Democratic Rep.
> <http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/09/10/72163282> Jim Oberstar of
> Minnesota, who has advocated for bike and pedestrian paths in his
> district. By putting a culture-war spin on the bridge collapse, Peters
> is hoping to run his gas tax proposal off the road. 
>
> Does Peters herself buy this theory? Does she really think that bike
> paths do not qualify as transportation infrastructure? Why does she say
> that things like bike paths steal money from bridge repairs when states
> have more than enough money to fix bridges? The secretary would not
> respond, but Jennifer Hing, a spokesperson for the Department of
> Transportation's Office of Public Affairs in the Office of the
> Secretary, would. She answered all the specific questions with one
> resoundingly uninformative e-mail: "The federal government should set
> high standards for and invest in the ongoing safety, reliability and
> interconnection of the nation's transportation network. State and local
> communities should have the flexibility to then set local transportation
> priorities." 
>
> For their part, cyclists have been weaving through political land mines
> for decades. In the perennial struggle to gain public support for bike
> paths, they remain philosophical. Says Thornley of the San Francisco
> Bicycle Coalition: "Before there were automobiles, and after there will
> be automobiles, there will be bicycles moving people around for
> transportation." 
>
>  
> Lloyd Wright
> Executive Director
> Viva
> Robles 653 y Av. Amazonas
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> Ecuador
> Tel. +593 2 255 1492
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> Email  <mailto:lwright at vivacities.org> lwright at vivacities.org
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>  
> "Viva...changing the world one street at a time."
>  
>
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>   


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