Safe Streets! Open Trails!

We continue our dialogue on bicycle advocacy and the political process with another excerpt from the Bikes Belong Coalition’s Guide to Cycling Advocacy.

The federal government said it was time to give people more transportation choices and one of the things needed was to make communities more bicycle-friendly. The places many of us rode when we were kids — our neighborhoods — have been overrun by cars. Making our communities more bicycle-friendly can help address these concerns. Good roads: we need to plan and design streets and highways so that it’s easy for bikes and cars to share them. More trails: we need more trails, which are like the "parkways" of the bicycle network — special places to ride without cars. Today, this is being called neo-traditional neighborhood design and it is part of creating more livable — and bicycle-friendly — communities.

The federal transportation legislation, TEA-21, is designed to help support the kinds of actions needed to make communities more bicycle-friendly.

Why Johnny
Doesn’t Ride His Bike

In his March 1999 editorial, "Why Johnny Doesn’t Ride," Bicycling Magazine’s Geoff Drake makes the connection between the transportation system and what it’s done to the health of our nation’s kids:

"Bicycling’s California office is near two elementary schools, so each morning we see an endless queue of SUVs and minivans waiting to deposit all the little Barts and Lisas at school.

"What’s wrong with this picture? Why must our kids be individually chauffered to school, to soccer, to the park?

"Something sacred has been lost when a generation is growing up without the pleasure and freedom of riding a bicycle. The impact can’t be overestimated: Without this pivotal, unifying experience, cycling as a sport will wither and die.

"So, how can we reclaim the streets for our youth?

"The issue of inactivity has come to the attention of the influential Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the same richly endowed bureaucracy that went up against the tobacco industry with such success.

Now the CDC has decided to take on the next big threat to public health: inactivity."

How did this come about?

Not long after the end of World War II, about the same time as the first Baby Boomers were learning to ride bikes, our federal government started funding the construction of the Interstate Highway System. It was a big job and it took a long time, but by 1990 it was more or less completed. When it came time to think about the future of the federal highway program — now that this system of more than 42,000 miles of big highways had been built — the question that was asked was "What should we do now?" Would you believe that part of the answer that the Congress came up with was we need to make it easier and safer to ride a bike?

That’s right! The federal government said that it was time to give people more transportation choices and one of the things needed was to make communities more bicycle-friendly. Because, for 40 years all the attention had been directed to building fast roads between cities and across the country, while our communities — the places where we live — were generally neglected.

The quiet residential streets of the 1950s aren’t so quiet any more. Many of them have been widened to make way for more cars that are travelling much faster. The places many of us rode when we were kids — our neighborhoods — have been overrun by cars. Today, many parents are afraid to let their children ride or even walk to school. This isn’t a good thing. Public health officials are concerned by the rapidly growing number of kids who get little or no regular physical activity and who have become obese. And this is not just a problem for the kids. Most of us are not getting enough physical activity, increasing the risk of chronic disease. In addition, we continue to suffer from bad air quality, most of it due to the overuse of cars: more than 40 percent of all trips are less than two miles long, yet even most of these short trips are made by car. Making our communities more bicycle-friendly can help address these concerns.

What Needs To Be Done?

In June of 1998, at a press conference held at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the pro-bike provisions included in TEA-21, Bill Wilkinson of the Bicycle Federation of America identified five factors that make communities bicycle-friendly:

1. Good roads: we need to plan and design streets and highways so that it’s easy for bikes and cars to share them. And, we must go back and fix the streets we already have so that people feel comfort-able riding on them.
2. More trails: we need more trails, which are like the "parkways" of the bicycle network — special places to ride without cars. While trails won’t get you everywhere you want to go, they are wonderful places to ride. In addition, they are great places for young riders and other beginners or casual riders to get comfortable with their bikes before moving out onto the street.
3. Careful drivers: we need to get drivers to pay more attention to bicycles on the road and to share the road. Mostly this means getting them to slow down, especially in neighborhoods and residential areas where there are apt to be kids on bikes.
4. Good riders: we need to give more attention to coaching bicyclists of all ages on what they need to know and do to share the roads safely and confidently. For kids, this might mean bicycle education at school; other approaches will be needed to reach adult riders.
5. Well-planned neighborhoods and communities: we need make our neighborhoods and communities more like they were in the early part of the 20^th century. Back then things were closer together so you could bike or walk to school, to shopping, to the park, even to work. For longer trips, transit was available, so most people didn’t need a car. Street networks were more interconnected so there were more route choices and less congestion. Today, this is being called neo-traditional neighborhood design and it is part of creating more livable — and bicycle-friendly — communities.

How Can This Be Accomplished?

The federal transportation legislation, TEA-21, is designed to help support the kinds of actions needed to make communities more bicycle-friendly. But, there’s a catch: it doesn’t tell state and local governments that they must do it. This is called being flexible and what it means is that while state and local governments are required to plan for bicycle use they are not required to actually spend any money to do anything about it. They get to decide what to do with the federal transportation funds. Here’s where you come in.

If you want to make your community more bicycle-friendly — if you want to see TEA-21 monies used for things like good roads and more trails — then you are going to have to ask. Actually, you are going to have to demand that this be done because the truth is that most state and local transportation agencies, if left to decide themselves, will spend all of these monies on more big, fast highways. After all, this is what these agencies have been doing for most of the last century and it’s what most of the people who work for these agencies have been doing for their whole careers. Like most of us, they aren’t necessarily eager to learn new tricks. Perhaps even more challenging is that "more big, fast highways" is what some special interest groups actually want. Transportation spending priorities and decision-making have long been dominated by developers and the real estate industry, by highway construction firms, and by auto interests (i.e., manufacturers, oil companies, and groups like AAA) who have made use of public funds and public space to support their private interests. It’s time for the broad public interest to be better served. For this to happen, the public will have to get organized and become effective at changing the priorities for transportation spending. You can be a representative of this public interest; you can be a voice for change. Change won’t happen any other way. TEA-21 is a tool, but only you can put it to work to make your community more bicycle-friendly.

Short-Range Transportation Improvement

Programs MPO Transportation Improvement Plans (TIPs) and Statewide Transportation Improvement Plans (STIPs) are short-range plans (typically for the next three years) that identify which transportation projects are to be funded and implemented. This is really where the action is. These are the projects that will be funded and built. Projects listed in the STIPs and TIPs must be consistent with their respective state and local long-range transportation plans, and funding for each of the projects must be identified.

Smart bicycle advocates watch the TIP development process and work to have bicycle projects included. Importantly, TIPs and STIPs must also involve public participation, unlocking the door to bicycle advocates so they may become involved in the development of the TIP. However, getting bike projects and programs in these short-range programs can be challenging given the stiff competition for funds.

In some of places, it’s claimed that bicycle projects "divert" or siphon off federal transportation dollars that might otherwise be used for "more important" projects, i.e., those that benefit motor vehicles. The City of Seattle found an elegant way around this barrier. The city developed project evaluation criteria that give credit for the beneficial outcomes of bicycling and motorized transportation.

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