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The Recovery Act's impact on cyclists
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My colleague Adam Voiland, who is the DC Bicycle Transportation Examiner, has written an excellent post about an anti-bicycle amendment that failed to make it into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (known to wonks as ARRA 2009). His post prompted me to take a look at the actual legislation to confirm that the amendment did not get written into the bill.
As far as I can tell, it did not, but have you ever looked at one of these sorts of documents? They are not especially complicated, but oh do they make for dense reading. Here's a typical example on page 92 of ARRA 2009, brought to my attention by America Bikes:
"Provided further, That 3 percent of the funds apportioned to a State under this heading shall be set aside for the purposes described in subsection 133(d)(2) of title 23, United States Code (without regard to the comparison to fiscal year 2005):"
According to America Bikes, here's what this statement means:
"States must spend 3 percent of their allocation on the Transportation Enhancements program, which is a primary source of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure funding. The remainder of the “highway” money also creates an opportunity to build complete streets. All of the highway funding is flexible and bicycle and pedestrian projects are eligible. The 3 percent in Transportation Enhancements is a floor not a ceiling."
The folks at America Bikes must be more familiar with "subsection 133(d)(2) of title 23, United States Code" than I am, so I'm going to take their word for it on this one.
That's the good news. The bad news is that it's still not at all certain that any of the shovel-ready, bicycle-friendly transit projects that have been identified by America Bikes will be a part of that three percent. To learn what to say in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger to encourage him to devote some of ARRA 2009's funds to projects that make cycling safer, click here.
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