Situation For Biking Gets Worse In The House, Act Now!

Written by Boston Biker on Jan 31

From MassBike

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The situation in the House is even more dire than we reported last week. We’re alerting you again because your representative, Michael Capuano, is a leading member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. (If you do not live in his district, you do not need to take action yet.)

 

If you contacted Mr. Capuano last week, thank you! But if you have not yet contacted him, right now is the time!

 

Today, the House releases its transportation bill, the American Energy and Infrastructure Act. When we got in touch with you last week, we knew the bill would be bad news for biking and walking. But we didn’t think it would go so far as to completely cut bicycling and walking out of federal transportation policy.

 

We now know that the bill would do much more damage than initially thought, including:

• Destroys Transportation Enhancements by making the program optional
• Repeals the Safe Routes to School program, reversing years of progress in creating safe ways for kids to walk and ride bicycles to school
• Allows states to build bridges without safe access for pedestrians and bicycles
• Eliminates bicycle and pedestrian coordinators in state DOTs
• Eliminates language requiring that rumble strips “do not adversely affect the safety or mobility of bicyclists, pedestrians or the disabled”

 

But there is still hope. Representative Petri (R-WI) will stand up for bicycling and walking by offering an amendment that restores dedicated funding for Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School, and hopefully goes even further to address the other problems. We need you to contact Representative Capuano TODAY and ask him to SUPPORT the Petri amendment!

 

This is as urgent as it gets. Even if we do win this amendment, there will be a long road ahead. But if we lose here, we risk losing decades of progress.

Let Mr. Capuano know what biking and walking mean to you. In his district alone:

• Nearly $2 million in Safe Routes to School funding has gone to making the streets safer for children trying to walk or bike to school;
• Transportation Enhancements has supported over $34 million in bike and pedestrian infrastructure, improving the experience for all users of the road;
• Nationally, biking and walking make up 12% of all trips, and 14% of traffic fatalities, but only receive 1.5% of federal funding.

Representative Capuano’s office phone number is (202) 225-5111, or you can email him by clicking here. Please take action today.

1. Call and/or email Representative Capuano TODAY, tell him why bicycling is important to you, and ask him to do two things:

• SUPPORT the Petri amendment to maintain funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs
• OPPOSE any move to eliminate funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs

2. Email [email protected] and let us know you contacted him.

If you don’t have time to call or email, then you can fill out an automated form here, though personalized messages are always preferable.

 

We know we are asking a lot of you and we thank you for all you’re doing to preserve biking and walking.

Tags: act now, congress critters
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